2nd Advent 2010, Clear the Attic

2^nd Advent

Philippians 4:1, 4:4-9

Therefore my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown of glory, stand firm in the power of the Lord.

Rejoice in the nearness of the Lord at all times! And I say it again: Rejoice!

Let a gentle kindliness be evident toward all human beings you encounter. The Lord is near! Let not worry have power over you; let your concerns in all things be known to God by sending your supplication and prayer upward in thankful thoughts. And the peace of God, which transcends anything that the intellect can grasp, will keep your hearts and thoughts safe in the Being of Christ….

And lastly dear brothers I say to you:

all that is true,

all that is worthy of reverence,

all that is good and holy,

all that is lovely to look at and beautiful to hear,

all that has virtue and deserves praise:

let these be the content of your conversations and thoughts. All that you have had handed on to you, what you have heard from me and seen in me—put all this into practice; then the God of Peace will be with you!

2^nd Advent Sunday

Dec. 5, 2010

Philippians 4:1 and 4:9

An old-fashioned house has three or four stories. The lowest is the basement. The furnace is there. The second and third floors are the living spaces. This is where most of the life of the home plays out. And the top story is the attic. This is where we have carried up and stored an assortment of old things; some things, like albums, we treasure; some are seasonally useful, like the winter quilts; other things are simply decrepit junk. Properly cared for, an attic can become a repository for the future.

This picture of the house is analogous to our human constitution. Our lower regions of metabolism are the furnace, keeping us warm; our middle realm, the realm of the feeling heart, is where we live out our day-to-day loves and hates. And our head is the repository. Like an attic, it doesn’t fill up by itself—we carry things up there, place them there; we order them and store them. It contains our memories and thoughts from the past.

From time to time, it is appropriate to sort through an attic. What is still useful and meaningful we can keep. What we can no longer use, we can give away. And the junk we simply get rid of. And so too with our mental state, the attic of our thoughts and memories.

In today’s reading, Paul urges us to clear out the attic. He urges us not to clutter up our head space with worried thoughts. He urges us that, rather than hoarding our good fortune with thoughts of entitlement, we instead send our thoughts of gratitude to the angels and to God. He urges us to pass on kindly thoughts to those around us.

Above all, he urges us exercise our own freedom of thought, to bring what is truly needful for the future into ourselves. For what exists in the living spaces of our hearts, and what is stored in the attics of the mind, we ourselves have placed there. He encourages us to fill our hearts and heads with what is true, what is good, what is beautiful.

We are in the season when we hope and expect the Coming One. We are preparing to receive the Christ Child into the warm and peaceful living space of the heart. And so we are sorting out the attic, getting rid of the clutter. We want to blanket Him in quilts of reverence and love. We want to offer Him the albums of our most treasured memories. And so we prepare our inner heart-home with loveliness, with beauty and with goodness, in anticipation of the Guest who is on the way.  

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