How are you getting ready for Christmas? Have you gotten out your Christmas tapes or CDs yet? Have you started your gift shopping? Have you decided what Christmas cookies you are going to bake this year? Have you written your Christmas cards yet? Have you put up your Christmas tree?

Over the years it seems like Christmas preparations are starting earlier and earlier. Now some stores are starting to put up their Christmas displays as early as Halloween. While that may seem out of place, I suspect they are merely following that traditional advice, "One can never start too early to get ready for something big."

How are we getting ready for Christmas in the church? Let's allow the Gospel lesson from Mark 13 to set the stage for us.

"But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory ... But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come ... And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."

Are we talking about the same festival? Where is the spirit of peace and goodwill? Has the Church made a mistake? The answer is "No." The differences come from what we are preparing for. The secular world measures this time of preparation by the number of shopping days until December 25. The Church measures this time of preparation in terms of the number of days remaining until the time when Jesus will return to the earth in glory and power.

I don't know about you, but that completely reverses my personal expectations about celebrating Christmas, let alone getting ready for it. Don't get me wrong. I like to get caught up in the "Christmas spirit." I like to put up and decorate the tree. I like to get out our Christmas music. I like Christmas cookies and Christmas parties. I like shopping for Christmas gifts. But if the theme of this first Sunday in Advent is to focus our attention on the real meaning of Christmas, then we need to realize that celebrating the birth of Jesus was important to our ancestors in faith because he was coming back again!

I am not advocating a change in the customs used to celebrate Christmas. I am suggesting that we need to change the manner in which we prepare to celebrate Christmas. I believe we need to recapture the sense of eager anticipation about the second coming of Christ which was present in the early church. During this Advent season, we need to listen to God calling us to look beyond "today and tomorrow" to the time when Jesus will come back and usher in God's kingdom in all its fullness.

Unfortunately, throughout the church's history, some branches of Christianity have taken these apocalyptic words of Jesus and used them to paint a "horrifying picture" of the coming of this kingdom. Think for a moment. What feelings do you experience when you think about the so-called "end of time"? I would venture to say that far too many devoted Christians have "doom and gloom" images about this future. It's no wonder that we tend to ignore this dimension in our Christmas preparations.

Keep two things in mind: First, the early Christians looked forward eagerly to the return of Jesus. They were not frightened by it. In fact, they expected it to happen in their lifetime. If there were any problems, it was disappointment when Jesus' return did not happen when they thought it would. Secondly, those who claim that the return of Jesus will be "terrifying" are misinterpreting the words of Jesus! Jesus was saying that God's final kingdom will come with such power that the forces of evil will be toppled.

What does all this have to do with our daily living? While Jesus' second coming might not appear to have much to do with everyday life, it has a powerful effect on it. Why? Simply this: What we believe and feel about the future determines what we feel and do about the present.

It means, in the first place, that life is not an endless succession of repetitive moments in which we feel that we are caught on a treadmill that is seemingly going nowhere. That's all too common a feeling. It is easy to get caught up in the routine events of everyday life. The problem is that if we only look to the immediate future, there appears to be no end in sight. But when seen from the viewpoint of eternity, even what we sometimes feel to be monotony is moving us steadily forward toward God's kingdom. Remember -- God measures time differently than we do. What seems to us like an "eternity" is to God but a "split second" and a "watch in the night." God's "eternity" is beyond our comprehension, but far more magnificent that we can ever imagine.

Secondly, it means that adversity never has the last word in life. Regardless of how terrifying or trying our present circumstances are, "they, too, will pass." In fact, that is the wonder of the apocalyptic language used in scripture. The supposed "gloom and doom" which it describes is really a picture of present adversity which the return of Christ will bring to a permanent end. There will be nothing more to be afraid of, for the "Lord God omnipotent will reign."

Those who use biblical imagery to instill fear about the end of time are not paying attention to the example which Jesus set. Eighteen times in the Gospels, Jesus said to the disciples when they were terrified, "Do not be afraid." My words to you this morning are, "Don't ever let someone, however well-intended, cause you to be afraid of the end of this age." It will be a glorious time when God returns all creation back to himself.

This morning we discover that we are preparing for much more than December 25. Because of the birth of Jesus, we also are preparing for that grand and wonderful day when there will be no more pain or sorrow or suffering or death. We are getting ready for an event which has no equal in human experience and for which we wait with eager anticipation.

As I tried to picture this sense of eager anticipation, I remembered what it was like for me to wait for Christmas morning when I was a child. That is when my family opened our gifts. The closer it got to Christmas, the more excited I became. On December 24, my enthusiasm reached its zenith. In the early evening was the Sunday School Christmas program. We children were allowed to stay up late so we could attend the midnight candlelight service. I still remember how difficult it was for me to fall asleep that night. Multiply that sense of anticipation by a thousand and you will have merely scratched the surface of the sense of anticipation surrounding Jesus' return to earth.

This Advent season I want you to expand your Christmas preparations to include Christ's coming back to earth in power and glory. No one knows when that will happen, but we do know that it will happen. Allow your eager anticipation of that event to spill over into your anticipation of this year's Christmas celebration. I promise you that such a vision will change the way you live from day to day. Remember -- "one can never start too early to get ready for something big!"