At the stores, it's already Christmas

Only church people celebrate Advent. The commercial world celebrates either "Christmas" or "the Holidays." But I'm getting ready to celebrate Advent at our church, and I'm trying to wrap my mind around how to make it meaningful to my parishioners.

Recently, I saw a television ad where a major national retailer was reviving an idea that's been around since I was a kid: lay-away. With lay-away, you don't just go to the store and drool over the things you want (for yourself and for others); you actually put those things in the shopping cart. But you don't take them home with you. You put them on lay-away, where they'll stay as the price for their purchased is paid in installments. (Yes, that sounds like a reverse form of credit cards, where you can now pay for your gifts after they've been taken home and given to the person on your list.) With a credit card, there's no anticipation. With lay-away, there is.

I guess Advent is something like lay-away. I can make a list of all the good things that might happen in my life if God actually lived nearby -- in my neighborhood. But that hasn't happened yet (or has it?) Nonetheless, the things on my list are placed on lay-away, in anticipation of that day. I wait, excitedly.

And then, one day late in December, I receive the news that God has come, and is indeed living in my neighborhood. Now, everything in the cart is mine -- to share.

My credit cards haven't taught me to look forward to things. They haven't taught me what it's like to lay in bed at night dreaming about when all those things in that lay-away cart are mine, to enjoy and to share. My credit cards teach me only that, even though I can have it all now, there's a price to be paid off in the future.

I guess I'll just put this Advent thing on lay-away. Maybe that will leave me laying in bed at night dreaming of what might yet happen.