Dry, barren, and harsh describe the desert. In our lives, there are also desert spaces. Spiritual emptiness because prayer is dry. Emotional desolateness because loved ones hurt us. Wasted hopes because we've squandered God-given opportunities.

We avoid these wastelands within us. We fill them with anything and everything to mask these deserts, distract our gaze elsewhere and numb us from confronting them. Perhaps this describes our Advent thus far - busy with Christmas preparations like present shopping, house decorating, choir caroling and much more. What about preparing ourselves spiritually to welcome baby Jesus?

Today's readings insist we enter our desert spaces. There, God will prepare us spiritually for Jesus' coming. He will do for us what He did through John the Baptist for the crowds in the wilderness - point all to Jesus' coming and renew their hearts for Him.

God wants to do the same for us with Jesus' coming. The parched land within us will bloom. The sickness we have will be healed. The fear we dread will lessen. The brokenhearted will be restored. With God, the wastelands within us are surprisingly grace-filled spaces for God to re-create us anew in Jesus.

Advent cannot be about busying ourselves for Christmas; it distracts. Advent begins when we return within ourselves; there, God has already birthed Jesus in us. This truth is outrageous but joyful. This is why we must wait expectantly for Jesus' coming: he is God-with-us, now and at Christmas.