An Advent Reflection
Advent begins with movement. God does not wait for us to climb our way up to heaven through our own efforts or “goodness”; he comes down to us. That’s the Advent message. He steps into dust and breath, into a stable thick with the smell of animals and the ache of human longing. And then, and only then, can we people begin to move toward him. Shepherds left their flocks. Magi traveled a great distance. Lepers approached Jesus despite local laws forbidding it. Even a Roman centurion pursued Jesus when desperate. Worship is always a response to God’s arrival.
But Advent also presses a quieter question that I hadn’t considered until this morning: When we come to Jesus, what do we imagine we are bringing with us?
Some of us come empty-handed, or at least we feel that way. John the Baptist stands in the wilderness with no résumé and no illusions about his worthiness. He brings a message of repentance. He brings honesty. He brings the truth about himself. “I am not the Messiah,” he says, clearing space so that Jesus can be seen. There is nothing flashy here, nothing impressive—just a man who knows he needs mercy. And I love how The Chosen series has captured these qualities.
Others come like the Magi, bearing gifts that cost something. The gold, frankincense, and myrrh were costly, intentional, and deeply personal. The Magi bring what they have and lay it down before a child who cannot yet say thank you. They do not explain their gifts. They simply open their hands. Advent reminds us that worship often looks like surrendering what we once thought was essential.
Still others imagine that what they bring to Jesus as a kind of report. Like the servants in the parable of the talents, we arrive with our accounts. Here is what I did with what you gave me. This instinct runs deep in us. We often believe that faithfulness can be measured. And yet even in this parable, the surprise seems to be not productivity but trust. The servant who fails does not fail because he produces little, but because he lives in fear, afraid despite the master’s goodness.
The Apostle Paul offers us another way of imagining what we bring. Over and over again, Paul speaks not of achievements but of bodies. “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” We lay our “trophies” down, yes, but also our ordinary, vulnerable, daily, and mundane lives. Paul brings his weakness. He brings his scars. He talks of a thorn he cannot remove. What he lays before Jesus is not strength but availability. God’s power, it turns out, shines out in our weakness.
There is still another way Scripture invites us to think about what to bring in our coming to Jesus. Sometimes what we bring to Jesus is not something we possess, but someone we love. Think of the friends who lowered a paralyzed man through the roof, or the parent who brought a child for blessing, or the women who came to the tomb carrying spices and grief. They brought love on behalf of another. They came saying, in effect, I cannot fix this, but I trust You.
Advent gathers all these postures together. We come empty. We come bearing gifts. We come with our lives exposed. We come offering our work. We come carrying others. And always, before we bring anything at all, Jesus has already come to us.
This is the grace of the season. We do not bring ourselves to Jesus to earn a place at the manger. We come because he has already made room. Whatever we carry, He receives it not as a transaction but as a relationship.
So come. This Advent, bring what is honest. Bring what is costly. Bring what is broken. Bring who you love. And discover again that the God who comes to us is far more interested in us than in anything we imagine we carry or offer.