I’m not the first person to point out that holiday dinners take hours upon hours to prepare and scarcely any time to eat and the house takes days to get ready for the presence of beloved visitors who stay for less than a day. I won’t be the last to call out that reality as we head into the holiday season. Getting ready for a special event can often take substantially longer than the event itself. Hundreds of hours of practice prepare the young pianist for the recital performance of five minutes.  Invariably, the effort is worth the return.

Soon we enter into the Advent season when weeks of preparation are an investment in eternity.

Being of imperfect faith, we go through the preparation process each year for the coming of Jesus. We get distracted preparing the home for guests, preparing for holiday travel, preparing decorations and gift wrapping, preparing meals, preparing the budget for gift expenditures, preparing the pipes for winter freezes, preparing for all manner of things. We invest great amounts of time in events or outcomes that don’t last long.

Eternity is a long time. Perhaps we could be more intentional about preparing for Jesus to enter our hearts than we are for dusting, cooking and such. It is hard to do, but maybe it will be this Advent when we can do better.