Finding God in the Margins
How we can deepen our experience of Jesus through Advent
Welcome to the 2022 Embracing Hope Advent series. Ok…so it’s not quite time to start, but I wanted to take a moment and share a few thoughts in preparation to the beginning of our Advent series.
For many of us, this upcoming Christmas season may feel strangely familiar and also unfamiliar at the same time. December is usually a busy month filled with various Christmas parties, special events and other social activities, but for the past two years most of these gatherings were cancelled because of the pandemic. Many of these events are happening once again this month and so this Christmas season may feel quite a bit more busy than we are used to.
The reality is that it’s difficult to really connect with God when we are ‘on the run’, hustling about and moving from event to event, or task to task. The season of Advent is about taking time to wait and ponder the arrival of Jesus in our lives and in our world. We remember the story of His birth in Bethlehem but we also seek to recognize His coming to us in the present moment as well as becoming aware of the inner longing in our spirit for His promised return.
Whether you consider yourself a ‘reflective’ person or not, I believe that we will all encounter Jesus more deeply ‘in the margins’ of daily life. Margins are the spaces we have that give us time to pause and breath and look around in the midst of our busy day. Some are unscheduled and unscripted; others are intentional and planned.
This Advent season, how will you intentionally create some margins in your schedule?
My desire for this upcoming series is that you will take a few quiet minutes each day to read the daily Scriptures and written prayer that will come to your in-box. I am intentionally keeping them short, with the hope that you can fit these posts into your daily routine. I encourage you to thing about when you can plan some space in your day over the next month, to pause and read over these Scripture readings and daily prayer? Perhaps it’s in the morning before work, or maybe it’s later on at the office, or it may work best to pause in the evening as you are finishing the day. The best approach is to have a plan for when you want to create opportunities to ‘find God in the margins’ of daily life.
I wish you all the best and I look forward to sharing with you again soon!
Thank you Jim. I am back in Uganda and Rwanda for a number of months. I will appreciate your Advent series very much.
Interestingly here in Africa, I live with God and people consuming my life and the 'other' in the margins. The complete opposite of my life in Edmonton. This has been realized for many years while volunteering and becoming bold to speak and pray for others all the time.
Donna Ganpatt