This video captures the melancholic colors of an unfulfilled life, which is all too familiar for most of us. Images of a broken world and a myriad of human chaos is juxtaposed by a quiet and vulnerable baby boy, the Messiah in the manger. The producers express a severe opposition between the meaning of the season of advent and the actions of our society as a whole.
After a brief articulation of this disparity the video shows that there is a solution, and that’s reinstituting the true meaning of the Advent season within our hearts and living out that meaning in our actions.
Advent | Spirit Juice Studios
http://vimeo.com/6438274
Deeper Look
Patience is very scarce today. We have what many have nicknamed a, “microwave” lifestyle. There is really an almost neurotic behavior of finding the best deals, and being savvy when it comes to the newest trends and/or social movements. If it’s being talked about we have to be experts, if it’s being hailed we have to be advocates, if it’s being advertised we have to be owners. Christians are well aware of this, and yet we partake in the silliness just the same. Why is that?
There is a serious disconnect with what we want to do and what we do. As St. Paul says, “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”
So why this inconsistency? From personal experience, I know I am incoherent when I fail to trust God. Insecurity inclines me to cease believing that Jesus will take care of me, that he will protect me, and I instead begin to seek control over my own life. When we turn to the tangible “goods” that the world offers us in substitute of a trusting relationship with God we end up fragile, miserable, and worried. Christ impeccably and powerfully shows us that what the world sees as weakness is of no concern to God, and he does this by arriving as a fragile being himself. Also, it’s worth mentioning that he arrived at the exact time when an edict had been issued to kill first born male children, almost as if to rid us of any doubt that God is the real King of the world.
So let’s take that leap of faith this year. We are going to be vulnerable regardless of what we do, it’s just a question of whether you want the King of the universe to be watching over you, or whether you want to go it on your own. We need to accept the arrival of Christ in our hearts this year. Without a doubt, his presence will immediately begin that authentic transformation which we all long for with such passion.
