When it takes twice as long for the clothes dryer to do its job I know what's the matter.

Of course we clean out the lint filter regularly, but every do often so much lint accumulates that a deeper cleaning is necessary. I have a special light and tools to make this happen. Then, 10 minutes and a big ball of lint later, we are back in business and the dryer can do what the dryer is supposed to do.

Unfortunately what happens to clothes dryers also happens to us. 

As life goes on things accumulate, habits, routines, and possessions can clog our filters, until we're unable to do what we're supposed to do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “to be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

And the world often goes about that task of making us something else, through the accumulated clutter that you and I pick up - clutter that routinely needs to be purged.

This is what John the Baptist is talking about this Sunday, it’s one of Advent’s biggest themes: all those things that are keeping us from getting more serious with God with our goals, with our dreams, with our lives, need to be evaluated - and all those things that are clogging up the filter need to be cleaned out.

And so, what are the things that have gotten clogged in our filters? 

How can they be dislodged? 

How can we get back to the life we want to live, that God wants us to live?

May Advent, be for us, this wonderful opportunity to be more aware, more alive, more ourselves - made our best, in Christ.