about preparing him room

Stories shape our lives.  I say this not just as an English-major-person or a book-person but as a human being.

You know that feeling -- when you read a great story or hear one or have someone tell you one over coffee: the moment when you place yourself inside of something that wasn't yours before but then it becomes you.  You relate to the premise, you understand the trials, you see yourself in the characters, you weep from the sorrow, you learn from the lesson.  Stories knit us together in a beautiful way that is just plain true and undeniable.

I love remembering that as Advent season rolls around.  Because it is during this awesome season that we are invited to read the story of Christ, the story of how God became man and came to live with us. And each year that we read it we are knit deeper and deeper into it, and it becomes new to us.  Stories can stay the same, but their significance to us changes.  I kind of think of it like magic.

My sweet friend Sarah recommended John Piper's Advent readings called "Good News of Great Joy" and in it Piper encourages Advent season to be a time of self-examination; he quotes the song that says "let every heart prepare him room..." and that hit me today like it was brand new.

Prepare him room.  

Sometimes I see myself in stories and I wonder who I would be.  And today I saw myself in a role I'd never imagined before --  so often, as Jesus announces his presence in my life, as he asks to take up space within me, I simply tell him that I am too full.

There is no room in the inn.

During this season we wait and long and celebrate the presence of Christ; we hope for him and the earth groans for new birth.  But do we make the space necessary for his presence, for his radical entrance that will shake up and transform our lives? 

Preparing room is hard.  It involves heavy lifting.  It involves giving up the things you want to keep.  It involves knowing what's in there -- in the dark corners and hidden places -- what's happening in your heart that you let just live there because you'd rather not deal with it.  It is easier not to make the room.  But it is glorious if you do.

My prayer this Advent season is that I would truly let Christ's presence announce itself within me and that I would allow him to have all the space he needs to make me brand new. I have a hope that his presence can birth grace, patience, love, joy...all those things I want to be but am not very often. I have a hope that in the dusty work of clearing out rooms full of lies and pride and selfishness I am preparing for future glory, for a special guest to claim this house his own and to make something beautiful of it.