Friday Five: Preparation, preparation...

Sally at RevGals writes,

This has been a difficult week for me, the death of a little six year old has overshadowed our advent preparations, and made many of us here in Downham Market look differently at Christmas. With that in mind I ask whether you are the kind of person that likes everything prepared well in advance, are you a last minute crammer, or a bit of a mixture.....

Here then is this week's Friday 5:

1. You have a busy week, pushing out all time for preparing worship/ Sunday School lessons/ being ready for an important meeting ( or whatever equivalent your profession demands)- how do you cope?

I make a list. And I start the list with one or two things I've already done, so I have the visual of something crossed off right off the bat. This is trick of my mother's, and it works like a charm. Lists make me feel like things are not so overwhelming.

2. You have unexpected visitors, and need to provide them with a meal- what do you do?

We usually have the stuff to make Thai Chicken Pasta, our 'emergency back-up meal.' I could probably make that in a pinch. That, or convince them to go with us to the best Szechuan restaurant EVER, just down the street from our house.

Three discussion topics:

3. Thinking along the lines of this weeks advent theme; repentance is an important but often neglected aspect of advent preparations.....

True. But this year I am (insert horrified gasp here) departing from the lectionary, so I admit that repentance is getting neglected for us. However, I think the sense that something is not well with the world, or with our lives, which goes along with repentance, is a feeling common to most people at this time of year. The Norman Rockwell facade can only last so long. Even without John eating locusts and screaming about being a brood of vipers, we are still talking about lament - and that, to me, is part of getting to repentance.

4. Some of the best experiences in life occur when you simply go with the flow.....

Probably true. But as a fairly unrepentant control freak, I have rarely experienced this for myself.

5. Details are everything, attention to the small things enables a plan to roll forward smoothly...

Now that's a sentence which warms a control freak's heart. It is true that the small things make a huge difference. But it is also true that you have to learn to let them go. There will be typos in the worship bulletin; there will be pronunciation errors by the readers; the pastor will collapse in a coughing fit during the sermon (true story, last Sunday); it happens. If God is in the details, I hope God is also one who sees beyond the details to the intent of the whole picture. And forgives the errors along the way.

Bonus if you dare- how well prepared are you for Christmas this year?

Not very. Last night I met with my church council to tell them that I am resigning and taking another call. Once I get through this weekend, when the congregation will find out (the letter went out yesterday), I think I can move on to Christmas. It's an odd Advent this year. Good, but odd.