Introduction

In the Christian Church Advent is considered a time of Preparing for the Coming of Jesus.  More specifically, it's a time to remember the first coming of Jesus and also a time to get ready for His return.  Since this blog is relatively new, I'm changing the focus for the next month.  Currently, I am in the midst of a crisis of faith,  My husband is a pastor and the weight of the clergy spouse role and my inability to be what I feel God expects me to be within this role has created a classic case of church burnout.  At this point it is difficult to even step into a church and over the course of the last year I have just stopped going.  Advent is a perfect time to take a look around and test my beliefs and feelings, a time to look for what is real and true, a time to take a retreat from all of the self imposed "shoulds" of my Christian faith and simply look for the presence of Jesus.   Go back to the beginning, so to speak.   The Bible tells me that if I seek Him with my whole heart I will find Him.  That's what I want to do - look for Jesus.

This brings me to a question - where is the best place to look for Him?  I can't start with church - I'm not going to church regularly.  I could maybe start with the Bible but I confess that I tend to see the Bible as a giant To Do list with the consequence of failure being condemnation.  My husband tells me that Jesus came to bring us abundant life -- he didn't come to bring us the To Do list.  There are plenty of verses in the Bible that support this belief.  One of my favorite of those verses is John 3:17 He didn't come into the world to condemn the world.  He came to save it (my paraphrase.)    I guess this is the beginning of my search - this passage.