How do we react on a Monday morning, compared to a Sunday?! Many of us work Mondays to Fridays, and there is often the sense of ‘I don’t like Mondays’ after a weekend of pleasurable activities. Mondays represent the everyday life; there is a popular meme which says a retired person is the only one who likes Mondays!
As we prepare for Christmas, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by our jobs’ list and to feel that we are incapable of juggling the everyday demands of life with the additional activities of this period. Parents see the list of non-uniform days, Christmas parties, Christmas movies, Christmas fairs and feel that all they do in this month is hand over money to good causes and ferry their children to different events! Unsurprisingly, this leads to stress and frustration.
But God is there with us, in the everyday and the mundane, in the additional activities and in the frenzy of modern life. The Christmas message is that God is now with us on a full-time basis! Advent gives us the opportunity to pause, however briefly, and give thanks to God. Whether that is in the form of opening an Advent calendar, reading a Scripture from the Christmas story or going to a Christmas event doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we do pause and give thanks.