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Advent Works: With and Without Us

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Advent may cause you to think about holiday sales and twenty-five-day calendars filled with chocolates, or maybe candled wreathes illuminating promise-laden symbols on Sunday mornings throughout December. I think of these, too.

But Advent is a movement—a movement that Jesus catalyzed and continues to send forward. In a way, it moves without us. In another, it only moves with us.

Christ Without Us

In the first distinction—that Advent moves without us—a back road comes to mind, where the wind removed shingles from an abandoned house. The once-harnessed landscape proves its resiliency and power to do what it was meant to do. Honeysuckle and staghorn sumac refuse to be stopped. Through wood, glass, even concrete, they and their rooted kin press upward in progressive reclamation of discarded ground.

And Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like … ” (Matt. 13:33)

Again, a hoarder’s dwelling comes to mind, where hamburger wrappers and magazine pages stack upon stack in the buried darkness. Years pass as mold turns to rot turns to soil turns to seed blown in through an unmended screen.

And Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like … ”

Christ With Us

Advent, however, is not reckless and untamed; a flora takeover. Even the Lord cautioned against leaving land to itself (Ex. 23:29). So this isn’t quite it. The work Jesus catalyzed needs us, too.

Here a factory comes to mind, where the Pilkington Float Glass Process runs 365 days a year, producing an unending ribbon of glass; a perpetual, seamless movement of material, twelve feet wide and thousands and thousands of miles long. The workers feed sand, soda ash, and lime into a furnace on one end, and they program cutting tools at the other to segment this transparent miracle into retail sizes. My office window is a thing birthed in fifteen years of unbelievable motion? It is Genesis 2:15’s cultivation command and John 14:12’s you-will-do-even-more-than-Me promise lived out in industrial form.

But Advent is not bound either. It’s not a conveyor belt spinning emptily when our shovels have nothing to feed it. No. It’s both Christ without us and Christ with us. It is, somehow, the flora uncontained and the factory managed; a process that moves on its own and that needs us to move it.

Advent means “coming.” And it is. Methodically, surprisingly, independently, collaboratively, it is coming. In your work this week, remember the good call you’ve received. From attorney to zoologist, your activity in the world can help others see—perhaps for the very first time—that Christ has come and will come again to make all things new. His Advent is upon us.

Featured stories in the Advent Works series:

Corban Addison

Corban has seen Christ’s persistent work in some of the most difficult places. His best-selling novels about child sex slaves in India and refugees in war-torn Somalia come from his own first-hand observations of the faithful God has sent as healers. Get a non-fiction peak in Advent Works: Life in the Shadow of Death.

Leslie Leyland Fields

Leslie had her Christmas play interrupted when a production member couldn’t get Baby Jesus to show up. But it was in her disappointment and the awkward waiting with the crowd that Leslie learned something essential about the coming Christ. Enjoy her insight and humor in Advent Works: My Worst Christmas Play Ever.

Brock Henning

Brock remembers taking his action figures up the Christmas tree as a boy—seven feet off the ground—to see the world from what he called the “Jesus star.” Now at work, in the daily grind, it’s easy to forget how things look from up there. Until he meets a client named Jim. Read about Christ showing up every day in Advent Works: Monday Morning Stars.

Randy Kilgore

Finally, in a Daily Reflection, Randy Kilgore shares how our lives proclaim the ongoing work of Christ in the world when we follow the Greatest Commandment in Deuteronomy 6:5-9. Be encouraged by the Scriptures in Showing Jesus on the Run.

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Advent Works

If work is God’s gift to us and an invitation to participate with him in the work of redemption and restoration, it makes sense that we would experience grace and also be the conduits of grace in our work and workplaces. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ to do good work. So, in this season of gift giving and celebrating the gift of grace through Jesus, join us as we consider how to find grace in our work this Advent, in this series, Advent Works.

Featured image by keeva999. Used with Permission. Source via Flickr.

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