An Advent Journey

Advent Sunday is a good time to start a journey, so I'm inviting you to travel with me and others on the road marked out by John Kiddle from the Diocese of St Albans.
The Advent Challenge offers you the chance to receive a daily email or text, with a Bible verse and a short reflection. The website offers you the chance to share comments with fellow travellers.
I've posted an prayer for the start of the journey up there, and I hope that I won't be travelling alone.

I've been a journey the last couple of days. A journey of 300 miles, to Bristol and back, to see Michael my son. Very nice, very pleasant to see him in his new surroundings at university, and to meet some of his new friends.
But as with all journeys, it needed some preparation, and some work. Most of the work beforehand was done by Rachel, who booked us a place to stay overnight, organised food, supervised the packing and thought of every detail like cancelling the milk, and getting friends to feed our guinea pig while we were away. My part came in doing the driving – Rachel doesn't much like motorway driving, so I took care of that.
When you come home from a journey, you see things in a new light. The revelations that come from a day or so away are nothing earth-shattering – mainly in our case to do with how much colder a vicarage is than a hotel room!
But I want to suggest that these three components are common to all journeys – preparation; work in the travelling; and discovery – both of new things learnt on the way, and new perspectives on your situation back home.
Travel broadens the mind.
So it's with that in mind that I want to invite you on a journey this Advent. Don't worry, it won't cost anything in petrol or hotel bills, it won't take you away from the vital things you've got planned over the next few weeks. But I hope, that if you put a little effort into that preparation and the work of the travel, that you will make some valuable discoveries along the way.

The passage from Isaiah that I'll hear read in church in 90 minutes' time ends with these words: "Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord."

There's an invitation if ever I heard one. Come on, let's walk in the light of the Lord together.

What would it mean for us to walk in the light of the Lord? What would need to change in your life, if that truly were to happen? I can't answer that question for you, I can only begin to answer it for myself. And for me, it would mean a little more dying to self, and a little more living to others. It would mean a little less finding out what pleases me, and the little more finding out what pleases God. Paul in Ephesians says “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light and find out what pleases the Lord.”

So will you come on this journey with me? Every day another step? I don't expect great revelations will accompany us every step of the way, or that wonderful insights will come on every single day. But it's important not to be discouraged if nothing happens at first.

I'm confident of this, that God who began something good in you and in me, won't stop halfway, but will keep on working in us until the day when Jesus Christ does return, and that therefore if we ask, seek and knock, we will find.

And let me say that no journey is wasted. Not all who wander are lost. And if nothing else, we might see some nice scenery along the way.