Now through the end of December, a chance to re-examine the gifts of Advent, the arrival of a Savior, and the epiphany of Epiphany.
Isaiah 1:14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
Sometimes traditions of the church can become suffocating or dreary. Even the God who established traditional feasts and holidays for his people became downright angry about the way they were celebrated. My soul hates them, he says, they are a burden.
Traditions are gifts. They can be wonderful entry points to a deeper relationship with God, like beautiful gates we can pass through, admire, and even pause in the shade of to enjoy. But gates can keep people out too, and they aren’t the great destination – that’s what lies beyond the gates.
In my own experience, tradition-heavy churches kept me on the fringes of faith until my early 40s, when my own brokenness and need propelled me to reckon with the Triune God, differentiating relationship from tradition. I entered into life in Christ, and found it was an adventure, not boring or mundane. As C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan the King in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course He’s not safe. But He’s good.”
The words and symbols of our faith are prelude and postlude to dynamic, authentic relationship with God, and Advent is a wonderful time to remind ourselves that traditions are great appetizers, not the real feast.
Prayer: Giver of good gifts, thank you for the gift of rich traditions we celebrate this season. Help us enjoy them, teach them to our children, and keep them in our hearts always without making them the endpoint of relationship with you or others.
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