An Advent Devotion: Fixer Uppers

 

Hello, café friends! Today is the first day of Advent. I wanted to share with you a devotion that I wrote last year for this season. I hope you like it! Blessings on your Advent season as we wait for the coming of our Lord!

                                                        Fixer Uppers

In the small town of Waco, Texas, there is a little place. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called The Silos. If you’ve never heard of the Silos, then maybe you’ve heard of its owners, Chip and Joanna Gaines. And if you’ve never heard of the Gaines family, then maybe you’ve heard of their television show, Fixer Upper.

My sister, Tina, had been to the Silos not once, but twice. She was a big fan of the farmhouse, fixer upper style. On one of her visits to the Silos, she purchased a four foot tall framed art piece. Painted on a white wooden shiplap background are the words to her favorite Christmas hymn, O Holy Night. My sister loved that piece so much that she kept it hanging in her living room all year long.

I had been looking at that piece a lot last year, and one verse really resonated with me. “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”

I think we can all agree that the world is indeed weary. Through pandemics and politics, supply chains and social unrest, loss of jobs and loss of loved ones. It is pretty obvious. We need hope.

My sister needed that hopeful reminder. Five years ago, she went in for exploratory surgery. After surgery, the doctor told her husband, daughter and three sisters who were waiting to hear the news. Ovarian cancer. We knew our world would change that day.

We huddled around her hospital bed when she was in recovery, and the silence was deafening. What would we do? What could we say?

I had to break the silence, so I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head. I told her, very seriously, “Tina, I requested the Chip and Joanna Gaines Fixer Upper suite at the hospital, but they told me they couldn’t install the shiplap  in time.”

She laughed, and I laughed, and we all laughed.

Tina’s prognosis gave her a two-year life expectancy. And thanks be to God, she lived for four years instead. In those four years, we held tightly on to hope.

Psalm 130: 5-6 says “I wait for the Lord. My soul waits. And in His word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”

Advent is a time of waiting. We are reminded of the long wait for the promised Messiah, the word made flesh, Immanuel, born in a stable in Bethlehem. And we wait for the promised return of Jesus, our King, who is coming again to make all things new.

We wait because we know, without a doubt, that we are all Fixer Upper projects. We are broken, sinful human beings in desperate need of fixing.  Only this project is not a DIY project. We cannot fix ourselves. Jesus came to save us from our sins and fix us, once and for all, with the forgiveness he won for us on the cross. 

That, my friends, is where our sure and certain hope is found.

“Truly He taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother. And in His name all oppression shall cease.”

  Last year at the commencement of Advent, I held on to my sister’s frail and trembling hand and sang these words to her, with tears pouring down my cheeks. I read psalms to her and prayed with her. And even though she did not open her eyes, I knew that sweet child of God was holding on to hope. That hope carried her into the arms of her Savior just a few hours later.

This Advent season, let’s hold on to hope. Let’s remember “sweet hymns of joy, in grateful chorus raise we, let all within us praise His holy name.”

Christ is the Lord! Oh praise His name forever! His power and glory proclaim!

Let us pray:

Dear heavenly Father, we are weary, but you give us strength. You are faithful, and you keep your promises. During this Advent season, we wait for the Lord, and in His word, we hope. Our hope is in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Our hope is in Jesus.

Amen.