Advent Challenge Day 1

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So I went on Facebook.  After a crazy exhausting weekend of late nights with a child involved in a huge schools spectacular, attending a training day for a camp I'm helping on, church, another training afternoon...I looked on Facebook.  And behold I looked and I saw all the beautiful Christmas trees and the lights and the decorations and the Christmas baking and then the general feelings of inadequacy and failure that Facebook seems to create in me.  One big #pinterestfail.

Taking on an Advent challenge is my attempt to carve out a small chunk of time to focus on what Christmas is really all about.  I still don't really know how that Christmas tree is going to get set up or how the presents will get bought or what we'll be eating for Christmas lunches.  I'm trying to move past all that and come out of December more encouraged by who Jesus is rather than just defeated by busyness.  

In our first reading we kick off with the very first words of John's gospel 'In the beginning...'.  Tim Chester shows us how John chooses to miss the whole nativity story that the other gospels give us.  It's a very different take on the Christmas story to what we're used to hearing.  But I love that sense that John has of this being a BIG deal. He takes us back to the very beginning and reminds us that this Jesus is not just another person, another baby.  Jesus was always there.  Before the world had started.  

Why does this matter?  Because John is introducing us to someone who was before all the mess, all the sin, all the brokenness.  If I'm going to put my trust in someone I want to know that they are more powerful than me, bigger than me, able to do something about the brokenness.  

'In the beginning...'

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