The song that is repeating in my mind this morning is a favorite one of the young children (all grown up now) every Sunday in religious education classes throughout Advents of long ago: “Stay awake! (clap, clap) Get ready! (clap clap) You do not know the hour when the Lord is coming! Stay awake! (clap, clap) Get ready! (clap, clap) The Lord is coming soon!” The claps were, I suspect, the actual wake-up call for sleepy heads.
This is the perfect kind of day to look out the window, then turn over, pull up the blankets over yourself and go back to sleep. We had a hard frost in the night…the first really hard one of the season. But it’s Advent now and if we go back to sleep today, what will happen on all the coming Advent days? Where and when will the Lord enter in? How will we hear his footsteps on our hearts?
So turn up the thermostat and put on a sweater, grab a cup of coffee and sit in the quiet…Listen. “The Lord is coming soon.”