Happy New Year

When I accepted the position of youth director at St. Stephen Lutheran Church in Liberty, MO, I did so with the understanding that I would start sometime around January 1, 2011 - the beginning of the year. I was perfectly happy to finish out my last eight weeks at Company X, pulling out commas and inserting hyphens, making sure that "time point" was two words and "predose" was one. I had just reached a point where I felt "up to speed" with the work I was doing. After nearly a month of training I was able to accept amendments, review protocols and create report shells. It took no small amount of time to learn Adobe and figure out the differences between ACS and MLA. I was grateful for my supervisor's patience and felt I owed it to the company to stay there for a solid 6 weeks before announcing my intended departure. And then they fired me. Apparently I was not so valuable as I once thought.
So there I was at the beginning of November, unemployed (again). The good news - I had already secured another job. The bad news - it didn't start for eight weeks, which just so happened to be the eight weeks leading up to Christmas, which just so happens to be the season during which I typically spend a disproportionate amount of my small savings.
This left me with three options:
1) I could spend the next eight weeks in the same manner I spent the end of August - unemployed; cobbling together freelance work; relying on the benevolence of others; counting my pennies; sleeping on spare beds and couches; trusting that there would be provision (or at least attempting to do so);
2) I could spend the next eight weeks in the same manner I spent the month of September - desparately looking for a job; dropping applications at restaurants and bookstores and staffing agencies (and trying not to feel guilty knowing that I would quit less than two months in);
3) I could look for the "seasonal work" that just so happens to be available between November and January; the problem being that just such work would hinder my ability to spend any holiday time with the family members who would be speninding their "last Christmas" at my parents' house (and they really meant it this time).
I was distraught. I did not want to attempt option 1 again and I did not want to miss out on my brother's last Thanksgiving and Christmas in Lincoln, NE. I spent a grand total of 12 hours on option 3 (going so far as to apply with my third staffing agency) before I came to a rather obvious realization: I already had a job. I spent three months applying, interviewing for, and considering that job. It took five days of arduous, ardent prayer, meditation and resignation before I accepted what God seemed to be serving me on a silver platter. Why was I looking for something else?
So I did what I perhaps should have done immediately - asked if I could start early. I'd agonized over whether or not to accept this position, wondering if youth ministry was really a good idea. I'd faced my fear of commiting to a job and living in one place for more than 6 months. I confronted the fact that taking this position might be the only argument I could ever make for the divine intervention that I'd never really seen in my life. I'd made the difficutl decision, why not jump in?

I entered my new office in the middle of November, but didn't really begin working until the following week. It seemed a sort of struggle to start something at this point in the season. It's busy and booked up and far too difficult to butt into. How was I to begin new at the end of the month, the end of the semester, the end of the calendar?
A few days in I started thumbing through the lectionary and looking at the sermon series. I discovered that I wasn't actually make a beginning during an end afterall. According to the liturgical calendar the end of the year has already passed. Sunday, November 28th was the first day of Advent, the first day of a new year in the church. I find the coincidence of this entirely appropriate. If I'd waited until January I would have missed it. I would have missed the beginning.
It's an overstated phrase in the church to say that we get so caught up in the busyness of the season that we leave Christ out of Christmas. It has become cliche to remind congregations to "make room for Jesus." But there are reasons that phrases are overstated and concepts become cliche - because more often than not they're true. During the season of Advent we're asked to drop what we're doing and wait. To start something new at this point in the season. It's busy and booked up and it seems far too difficult to allow something else to butt in, but that's what we're meant to do. Not to fill every free spot in the week with a Holiday party, seasonal mingling or Christmas shopping excursion; but to empty it. To make space so that something new can happen. So that something (even someone) new can come. It is impossible to experience fulfilment when there is no void, no space of waiting, no season of anticipation.
As I start a new job, a new season of my life, a new season in the church, (and a new season of being without facebook), I invite you to start something new as well, to start anticipating what is to come.