Christmas greetings to all of you. I hope your preparations for Christmas are nearly made and full of wonderful things.

For myself, I haven’t done much. The weather has been such that I have elected to stay home where I am warm and comfortable. I have reached a point in life where no one expects me to entertain, shop, or even to party, so I don’t. I am very happy staying in my warm house and having folks come here. Last night, Jackie came with the three little ones and we made peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses in their middles. The little girls rolled the dough to death and then happily unwrapped kisses to plop in the center of each hot cookie. Colton just perched on my lap and rode around the house with me on my chair. He got on and he got off two million times and then he would hold up those little arms to me one more time. I am just glad that I can still lift him back up. I got a good upper body workout last night!

This week of Advent the theme is “redemption”. Redemption is kind of an old-fashioned word that is not used too much today except in religious circles. Still, it is a word that we still need. when we do something wrong, I think we all agree that justice demands that we pay for wrongs done. It’s not fair if we can do wrong and “get away with it.” We need to redeem ourselves somehow. When we do wrong, even when we don’t do very wrong, just not quite right, we are guilty. We are not perfect but are a tiny bit rotten. The Bible calls that “sin.” “Sin” is another word that we shy away from using. It seems harsh. Like there could be just a little bit of badness, but we don’t want to call it SIN. Nevertheless, wrong is not right and it needs to be taken care of. It needs to be righted and that is redemption, redeemed from wrong or sin.

So this week the Advent dwells on the need for redemption. How do we get rid of that rottenness and be pure? I think the first thing we have to do is realize our need for being saved or redemption. I am reminded of the movie “Finding Nemo.” “Finding Nemo” is a cute movie about a little fish and a little fish’s life. Nemo is an adolescent little guy eager to try out life on his own. His father is a bit overprotective, always curtailing activities that might be dangerous. He is over worried about Nemo because Nemo has a small handicap. He has one little fin that never developed fully. The father worries constantly. Nemo thinks he is capable of being independent and taking care of himself, so he takes off without thinking and finds himself in big trouble. He is lost and alone in a big, vast ocean full of bigger, scary, hungry, frightening creatures.

Nemo’s father loves him and will do anything to save him. He goes into that big, vast ocean undaunted by the seemingly impossible task of finding one little fish in it and saving that little fish. Of course many frightening things occur, but the father never gives up. The rest of the movie is spent going through many harrowing escapades until Nemo is found. Goofy little Nemo goes through all his adventures not even realizing that he is lost or that he needs to be found, but in the end, he does realize his need to be saved and he longs for the safety of Dad and home.

Like Nemo, we go through the Christmas season, not realizing our need to be saved. We swim around having a great time and don’t realize a need for a savior to come. Our concentration is not on our need for Christ to come, but on getting ready for family time, getting ready for a huge blow-out dinner, getting ready to have a good time at the party. All the while our father is planning how to find us and save us from our sin. He is planning how to find us and give us “redemption.” He is sending a savior – a light to the whole world.

This week is one where I should think about the plan God had to get me out of the ‘par-tay’ swim race. I must think about how God was intent on finding me. He is not willing to lose me. He is not willing to lose even one. His main idea was to search and search until I was found and redeemed. I need to be cleaned up and made pure so I can associate with a Holy God and the only way to do it is to be justified with Christ’s sacrifice for me. Justified – just as if I’d – never done wrong at all. I need that. I need to be redeemed and God chose to do it by sending His only son to conquer sin and redeem me from it. This week I think about redemption and how much I need it. Next week is concentration on the way God chose to do it. Incarnation is the theme for next week and the culmination of Advent.

Searching out the meaning of the tradition of Advent has been rewarding. I have been able to concentrate more on Christmas, Christ’s coming as He did, and what it all means to me. I hope it has done the same for you and that your Christmas time will be richer for it.

I’m a bit behind on this advent thing. There is supposed to be one more week before Christmas and there are only three more days! Doesn’t this always happen? Don’t we always scream, “Only three more days!!”? What creatures of habit we are! I will try to get that last Advent thought on “Incarnation” in before the New Year at least.

I think of all of you often and do so appreciate your responses to my musings in “My Coffee with Jesus.” God bless and have a very Happy Christmas.

Irma Jane Fritz-Zager

http://www.MyCoffeeWithJesus.com

Hello and Good Morning to Everybody,

This is the second week in Advent and my explorations into it continue. Last week it was “waiting” so we continue to wait. This week it is “Mystery”.

Mystery is more than not knowing something. There are overtones to mystery. There is a sense of curiosity and then awe about what we don’t know. We want to know a mystery but approach it with hesitation, fear and wonder. The mystery of God’s coming to earth as a man is wonderful, but also scary.

Why did He come? I put myself in His place as well as I can. Would I go down to live in a colony of ants – become an ant and live like they do? I don’t really like ants. I guess they do have a few redeeming traits. They are industrious, saving, and can lift really heavy burdens. They do have an organized system of livelihood and a social set up that seems to be to their advantage in life; but they don’t have much freedom to do anything but what each one’s place allows. I don’t think they care much about each other. They fight each other. I think they even eat each other. I wouldn’t go down to be an ant for anything. Even if I loved them, which I don’t, I wouldn’t want to be one. God came down to be like us in physical body. Our Holy God became a man for us. He must have loved us more than life. That is the only reason God would do that. He loved us. He loved us enough to be one of us.

Therein lies the mystery. Why does He love us? We are disobedient, ungrateful, mean to each other, and just plain ugly for the most part. We are unlovable creatures like ants, but He loves us anyway. He loves us more than we can imagine. He came to live with us, to put up with all our ugliness, and to save us from dying. He loved us enough to die for us. He loved us that much and He still does. That is the mystery.

Why does He love us? I can’t imagine, but I know He does because He says so in His Word and because He sits with me here every morning and gives me the comfort of His Word and all the promises in it.

Further mystery is the way He came. He came as a helpless child, totally dependent on ordinary people to care for Him and see Him to adulthood. He trusted His Father to see to all that. Knowing how greedy, selfish and obstinate people we are; He still came to be our mentor and Savior. That kind of love is a mystery to all of us.

Why He came– that is not a mystery. He came because He loves us.

Why He loves us, I don’t pretend to know. It will remain a mystery always. I am so grateful that He does.

Irma Jane Fritz-Zager

December 6, 2013

Good Morning Everybody!
It’s Friday morning, already the 6th of December. I don’t know where November went. I did very little, that I know, but the time went by and somehow the end of the year will be here and it will be 2014. The older you get the faster time flies by, doesn’t it?

I’m thinking this am about the coming of Christmas. It will be here so soon and I think, as we all do, about all there is to do to prepare. We decorate, we shop, we send out greetings, we buy specially good foods to serve, we prepare to entertain, we entertain, and so much more; just to get ready for Christmas.

I am thinking that this year I will be different. I will concentrate on the reason for the season and really prepare for a celebration of the coming of Jesus to this world. I will think about the fantastic idea of God, Himself, coming to be a man. He came to live among us and to be like us. He came to teach us how to live as His Father would have us live. He came to die for our sins; to pay for our sin so we might be good enough to be with our Holy Father and live with him forever. He came as a tiny baby, trusting His Father to keep Him from the ugliness that the world is. I want to really celebrate the beginning of all that. I am going to try to make this Christmas one where Christ’s birth is celebrated more that Santa Claus and all his trappings.

I love all the traditions of Santa, snowmen, sleigh bells ringing, and all the rest. Gift giving is a joyful tradition. I love to think of buying and giving something that will please the people I love. These are good things. But—, it is not all of Christmas.
I have a good friend who brought me a gift already. It was a book about Advent. As a Protestant all my life, I know very little about Advent. We went to a Lutheran church for several years and I think they celebrate Advent, but in that church, not so much. Stan’s church did an Advent thing, Since it was not a apart of our family tradition, we did not get a wreath or the four candles. I didn’t look into what it all meant. I continued to do as I always had done.

This little book made me think about Christmas, its meaning, and how I should be thinking a little differently than I had in the past. Maybe I should look into this Advent thing. Not necessarily as a ritual to be followed but as a preparation to get ready to really celebrate Christmas as the coming of Christ to this world.

I had to look up “Advent” just to see what it was all about. How it came to be and how it was traditionally celebrated. Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas and can vary in length. This year it is shorter since the first Sunday is the first of December and there are four Sundays before the 25th. There are themes to each week: waiting, mystery, redemption and incarnation. So far I have only considered the waiting part. I hope to explore the other themes with you as I go through His birth and them. After the birth of Christ, there are twelve days of Christmas which stretch through to January 5th and a time called Epiphany. I haven’t even begun to look into that. I know what the word means, but need to know so much more about its traditions and what it may mean to me as a Christian.

So the first week is one of waiting. We know He has come. We celebrate His birth and His first coming. What should I be waiting for?
We are waiting for the second Advent; His second coming when we anticipate “all things being new”, when there will be “no more sorrow, no more tears.” We don’t know how much time there is left. This is a period of waiting and of using this time to remember what He did for us on the cross and to joyfully celebrate His first coming — Christmas. This “waiting week”, what shall I do? What does a person do while waiting? I think we watch to see what will happen; but even more, we listen. When I wait, I listen for the first sound of something that portends the approach of what I am anticipating. I won’t pretend that God talks to me. At least He doesn’t talk to me directly like He did to the prophets. Nevertheless, that “still, small voice” comes through the Holy Spirit when one prays. I will listen for it. I will wait for the Word to come and for the light to appear. This will be a special time – this waiting. I will get ready to celebrate His coming and His birth.

So this Christmas season, I will daily look for Christ’s coming and into waiting for Him

Irma Jane Fritz-Zager