Ready or not, here comes Christmas. These weeks are filled with so much activity -- all the parties, the church programs, the card sending, the shopping, the visits to Santa. I like the story about the grandmother who took little Susie along on a Christmas shopping trip. After watching her grandmother choose and buy gifts all morning, Susie was taken to her promised visit to Santa Claus. She made her requests politely, and as she started to leave, Santa handed her a large candy cane. "What do you say?" prompted the grandmother. Susie furrowed her brow in thought, looked at the candy cane in her hand, then smiled and brightly replied to Santa, "Charge it!" It's been my observation that women are probably more conscious of the approach of Christmas than men. Someone has defined a man as a creature who buys football tickets three months in advance, but waits until Christmas Eve to do his Christmas shopping. "Ready or not," says Christmas, "here I come."

I'm sure a few of you have also seen the other kind of flashing red lights on top of, ah, other special vehicles ... and you've seen them in your rear-view mirror ... up close. You see those lights, and your heart starts pounding, your palms sweat, your foot instinctively comes off the accelerator. Everything in you snaps to attention, your mind becomes instantly clear and focused like you've had five cups of strong coffee. You quickly review everything you're doing in your life right then, your mind races with the different possibilities of what you had done wrong. After your receipt of the ticket or the warning, the police officer departs, and you drive away and are extra careful to obey every traffic law you can think of. You even turn on your turn signal to re-enter traffic, which no Rhode Islander ever does under normal circumstances. Seeing those flashing lights always affects the way we drive; it snaps us to attention and causes us to make changes that need to be made.

I think this is the kind of experience that describes how we ought to prepare for Christmas. In this season of preparation, most of us get excited about Christmas; some of us dread it, but either way, there needs to be a snapping to attention, a spiritual "sobering up." It is a time to take stock of everything we are doing in our lives, to have the willingness to straighten up and make whatever changes are needed. For centuries, the Christian church has called this season leading up to Christmas, Advent. Advent has always been viewed as both a time of anticipation and preparation for the coming of Christ. During Advent, we remember both the first and second comings of Christ. Certainly, this brings hope and expectation because the coming of Christ means salvation for those who trust in Him. But the coming of Christ also requires preparation. It requires a kind of sobering up; again, it's like looking in the rear view mirror and seeing the flashing lights. It ought to cause us to look at our lives and make the changes that need to be made in order to be ready. Imagine what you might do for the next two weeks if you knew Christ would actually come back on December 25th. How would you prepare for that day? (Ideally, nothing would change).

Paul tells us in Galatians that Christ came in the "fullness of time." This phrase, "fullness of time," meant that everything was "ready;" my understanding is that it also had a colloquial connotation in reference to the birth of a child. We talk about when an expectant mother is "due;" the Greek would express it as the "fullness of her time"... both literally and figuratively, the "fullness" of the mother's time had come, everything was ready, and the baby would arrive any minute. Christ was born in the "fullness of time." Many, many things came together at just that moment in history when Jesus was born, I'll just name four: (1) Culturally, Alexander the Great had spread the Greek language over most of the civilized world three centuries earlier. Greek was then established as an international language, and it was THE language by which the gospel was initially communicated. (2) Governmentally, the Romans had furnished and enforced a system of law which made it possible for the church to grow in relative stability. (3) Logistically, the system of Roman roads made travel by missionaries very possible; many of those roadways exist to this day throughout Europe and the middle east. (4) Religiously, it was the fullness of time because Judaism had firmly established the principle of monotheism.

Do you think that Alexander, as he was extending his empire, had any idea that God was using him to prepare the way for the babe of Bethlehem? Do you suppose that Julius Caesar, as he built the roads that made commerce possible over all the known world, knew he was preparing the way for the King of Kings? When Augustus Caesar sent out his decree that all the world should be taxed and that every person should be enrolled in his own cities, do you suppose that he had any idea that he was engaged in bringing to pass an ancient prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem? By the time John was "flashing his red lights" in the Judean wilderness, by the time he was crying out his prophetic, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight," God had already been at work for thousands of years bringing about just the right conditions for the birth of his Son. Then in the fullness of time, Christ was born. Our reading from Malachi speaks about the flashing red light prophet of God, this prophesied herald who was to announce, in so many words, "Ready or not, here He comes!"

Malachi 3:1 -- "'See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,' says the LORD Almighty." Note that God says He sends a messenger before Him. God Himself is coming; He will come to His temple. That is a prophecy of the Incarnation, of God coming "in the flesh" as Jesus Christ. As you can read in the previous chapter, the historical context of this specific prophecy is that the people were saying, in so many words, "God, the evil seem to do well, the good seem to suffer. Bad things happen to good people, and vice versa! If you were really a God of justice, you would come and establish justice on earth!" And God responds, again in so many words, "Yes, I should do that. And the day is coming when I will do that (see chapter 4 of Malachi.) But before that day of judgment, I will send my messenger before me. And before that day of Judgment, I myself am going to come to my temple." When God Himself comes to His temple in the person of Jesus Christ, His mission will not be a mission of final judgment ... yet! His mission will be that of a refiner of precious metal. See verse 3:2 -- "For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver."

That is a beautiful image, that of a refiner of gold or silver. I am told you can still see these refiners at work in the Middle East today at the oriental bazaars. A silversmith or goldsmith has a little crucible, and he places some ore in it. He fires it up, melting the ore and drawing off the dross in order to purify the metal. What happens in that simple process is that under the heat of the fire the impurity and dross gradually floats to the surface. As it floats to the surface the refiner scrapes off the dross. He keeps scraping off the dross until finally there is no more dross to be scraped off; he keeps up this process until he is finished. How does he tell when he is finished? He looks down into the crucible, and in that molten metal he sees the perfect reflection of his image.

That is the picture God uses. He will come to refine, to purify the sons of Levi, to prepare them for the day of Judgment. Who are the Levites? Strictly speaking, they are the priests ... those who are devoted to and employed in the service of God. Prophetically speaking, all Christians are Levites, as part of the priesthood of believers. The message of Advent through the prophet Malachi is the message of God saying, "When I come, I will not be coming in judgment yet. The role I will play at that stage is not going to be the role of final judgment, but a role of redemption. I am coming to save those who call on me, and by the power of my Holy Spirit I will refine them. I will work in their lives to prepare them for judgement." God is at work purifying us with the fire of His spirit in the crucible of this world. God uses the fires of adversity, the fires of trials and difficulties in our lives, to refine us, to make us into the people He intended us to be, to restore in us the perfect reflection of His image.

As chapter 4 reiterates, judgement will come! God will establish justice; there is a Day coming when He will purge all that is wrong and corrupt and evil from his Creation! But first will come the day of Jesus Christ the Savior, before the day of Jesus Christ the Judge. And on this note, the Old Testament closes, no more prophecies are uttered, the voices of the prophets are stilled ... until the next prophet comes along some four centuries later, in fulfillment of this promise of God recorded in Malachi and Isaiah. Four centuries later the messenger comes with his flashing lights ... "Prepare the way ... and prepare for judgement."

The flashing lights of the emergency vehicles and the flashing lights of the police cars have this in common: both announce that hope is on the way. Both vehicles contain agents of hope, people who's ideal objective is to restore wholeness, justice, to correct and repair what is wrong. During Advent we celebrate and remember that Hope has indeed come to this world, and that Hope is on the way ... that God's original plan and design will one day be fully and completely restored.