Exterior design is changing everywhere in this season of Advent. The exterior designs are nice, but they will do us no ultimate good because in the end it is interior design that counts. The new interior design will not be the result of something we do, but the result of something we allow to have happen to us. I assure you of this: God desires to do something inside us. God desires for something in the interior of our lives to be made new in this season. And there is the possibility that we might miss that crossing point.

There is help from our text. In this text, Jesus, at the end of his ministry, gives us advice that we can apply to the moment we anticipate his birth. The words of Jesus, taken out of context, can help us in this Advent adventure. Jesus said, "Observe, watch, get ready." He said that we should guard our hearts against waste and worry. This is the soundest advice that we could get as we enter this season.

I saw a bumper sticker which read, "Happiness is an inside job." I'm here to tell you that Advent is, too. What happens on the exterior is cosmetic and delightful but has limitations. What happens on the interior will occur when we choose to allow God to do something within us. That something has eternal value.

There are many barriers to our being made new by interior design in this Advent season.

Tears can be a barrier to Advent. In this season there will be tears of joy and tears of pain. In many homes across America, there will be gatherings in which a grandfather will look around the room at his children and grandchildren. At 85 years of age, he is aware that life is precious and short. At his age, he will realize how lucky he is to see everyone seated around him in relative peace and harmony. And he will cry. Those tears will be of deep joy. The family will not violate the moment by asking him why he is crying. They will understand. There will be wonderful tears of joy in this season.

There will also be tears of pain. Please trust this: whatever you are feeling as we come into this season, you will feel it more intensely. People who are up are really up. People who are down really feel down. We feel more intensely whatever we bring to the season.

Those who are in pain will have a special task before them. They, like Jacob wrestling the angel, will need to hold their pain down to the ground until they are blessed, not by the pain, but through the pain. We will pray for the courage to wrestle our pain to the ground until we are blessed.

Scott Peck was seated with a group listening intently to a woman describe in terrible detail the pain in her life. After she was through, Dr. Peck said quietly, "I am crying with one eye." He went on to explain that one eye of his was crying for the obvious pain that she was going through. The other eye, he said, was dry and gladdened by the fact that she had the courage to wrestle that pain to the ground until she was made stronger by it, rather than defeated by it.

So, bring your tears to Advent. Bring to this place the things you have lost, the things you are sorry for and the things you have not forgiven in yourself even though God has long ago forgiven you. The promise of God is that your tears will be transformed to triumph if you come to this place and grieve your own way and refuse to allow yourself to be fixed by the advice of others. By our learning to sit closely to each other in silence, God does the healing that we need so desperately. Tears can be a barrier to Advent. God can make them a bridge.

Anxiety can be another barrier to Advent. In our text, Jesus speaks of the "distress of the nations" and "people fainting with fear and dread of what is coming on the world." Jesus describes an anxiety that comes upon us when the transience of the world overwhelms us. Jesus would say that our anxiety is a sign of our help drawing near. Jesus would want us to know that "our extremity is God's opportunity." You know that the Chinese symbols for "crisis" and "opportunity" are the same symbol. Jesus knew that same anxiety.

I like John Cooper, the Ohio State University football coach, for many reasons, but especially for this one. As he was being interviewed once about a player who was in trouble with the law, a reporter asked if Cooper was going to kick the player off the team. He said, "No, I am not going to kick him off, because if I kick him off I can't help him. We are in the business of helping young people grow up, and you can't do that by turning them away when they make a mistake."

That is good news for those growing up, and that attitude is especially good news at Advent. We know in our hearts that we are changed for the better, not by persons who dump us in the midst of our mistakes, but by the ones who stand by us in our stupidity until the light of new sanity dawns upon us. Those who do this in our lives are gifts from God. The love of God is the kind that cares for us just as we are and not as we ought to be. In time, we become the way we are treated, not the way we deserve to be treated. This is God's finest gift. So, "watch -- for your anxiety is God's opportunity."

During the Civil War, Mary Chestnut wrote a diary. She wrote it with great anxiety. As she witnessed Sherman's march to the sea, she wrote of a "solid column leaving not so much as a blade of grass behind; a howling wilderness, land laid waste, dust and ashes." This was her anxiety. But she failed to write about others' opportunity. If she were to have told all, she would have included the fact that "the slaves were dancing in the streets." One person's anxiety can be another's answer to the deepest desire of the heart.

Depression can be another barrier to Advent. Without oversimplifying, it appears to me that there are basically two kinds of depression. The first is the very understandable kind. I talked with a woman recently who had been married for over fifty years. Her husband died. She went through a period of depression. This is not hard to understand. Her loss led her into a depression that she could not get around, but had to get through.

There is a second kind of depression that seems to be chemical in nature. Some people have an imbalance in their systems that makes them feel as if there is a great cloud over their heads even if they have everything and every cause to be happy. Because there is nothing apparent to be depressed about, a double bind occurs. The person has no reason to be depressed and has everything that should make one happy and is still depressed. Thank God we have lived long enough to know that something chemical is happening here which needs the good guidance of a competent psychiatrist who will both counsel and use medication as needed.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer experienced the kind of depression that we can understand. This Lutheran pastor, who opposed the Nazis, was finally captured and brought to a prison camp. His captors told him that he would be executed and, in fact, he was. As he waited with tranquillity at times and depression at other times, he wrote: Depression is loyalty's hour -- the hour when mother, lover, friend, brother, cover over calamity, till it is transfigured by gentle cosmic light!

That is our deepest desire whether we know it or not: that somewhere in this season we are blessed and bathed in "gentle cosmic light" that shows the way through the inevitable darkness that comes with living on this earth.

I have read about a depressed songwriter who battled the successes of the past and a fear of the future. He was bankrupt. He had a cerebral hemorrhage that left him partially paralyzed. He worried that the creative spark that had made him rich was gone. He was depressed. The texts that were his friends and that his soul could hear were texts such as "Why have you forsaken me?"

In the midst of his depression, a man came by who had compiled scriptures together in a semi-orderly fashion. He suggested that the songwriter put some music to the text. The writer looked at the text that read, "He was despised and rejected of humanity," and he felt that way, too. He read texts of the one for whom "no one had pity." He read about the one who trusted God still. He read the words, "I know that my redeemer liveth." He read the words "rejoice" and "hallelujah." That night George Frederic Handel was blessed by a "gentle cosmic light." He was led slowly out of darkness by a desire to write music at a feverish pitch. He worked tirelessly for days until, with manuscript complete, he dropped into a seventeen-hour, death-like sleep. A doctor was summoned to see if he was alive. Out of depression came the light of the Messiah. Out of that depression was left for us a light that would light the corridors of the lives of countless millions for all ages. Out of that darkness, a man in a deep depression began, as Stevenson said of the lamplighter, "punching holes in the darkness."

God punched holes in the darkness through Jesus. Jesus at the end of his life left us words that we can use as we anticipate the coming of the Christ. "Take heed. Listen. Be awake." "Your extremity is God's opportunity."

God is coming to make you new in this Advent season by interior design. Your job is to show up. God will do the rest. Peace to you as we together begin the long journey in darkness toward the marvelous light of Bethlehem. Amen"