Opening Up--An Advent Necessity

“Fling wide the portals of your heart:  Redeemer, come, with us abide; our hearts to thee we open wide; let us thy inner presence feel; thy grace and love in us reveal.”  (Advent Hymn)

Mountains and hills,  deserts and valleys, along with many a crooked road and many a rough place are part and parcel of every person’s life.  If we are alive we can’t avoid them. Some we create for ourselves.  Some mountains and hills, deserts, valleys, wilderness places, and crooked roads and rough places just seem to happen.   There is no avoiding them.  I’m not speaking of a physical geography (though climbing mountains and walking through desert places has a physical effect)—I’m using mountains, valleys, hills, deserts, crooked roads and rough places in a figurative way.  Some of our problems seem like mountains that we can’t scale.   The death of a parent, loved one, or friend can send us into a valley of sorrow.  Health issues can force us into a desert of despair.  A broken relationship can create a wilderness space of depression.  All that affects us outwardly, every mountain, every hill, every desert wandering, every valley, every rough and crooked road also affects us inwardly. 

Everything we experience on the outside gets built on the inside. We may scale the mountain and cross the barren desert on the outside but on the inside we say, “I never want to go through that again.  I never want to experience such depression, loss, hurt,  or despair ever again.”  Thus, to protect, shield and isolate our hearts from these outward things, to keep these things from ever happening again to us, we surround our inner chamber (the Bethlehem of the heart) with mountains, hills, valleys, deserts, along with crooked roads and rough places. No hurt, no despair, no loss, no sadness, and no one, can get to our hearts any more.

In Advent, we must go to that Bethlehem of the heart, to our inner chamber, and allow the mountains and hills we’ve erected there to be brought low, the valleys there to be exalted, and the crooked places there made straight “where the Lord our God may go.”  It is no easy trek to get to that inner chamber, and it is a life-long journey,  but it is part of the preparation necessary to experience “the glad tidings of great joy at Christmas:  “Unto us a child is born.”