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Jeremiah 33.14 "The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will fulfil the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah."

Traditionally Advent Sunday is a time to look forward. First, to Christmas when we remember that God sent Jesus to be our saviour. Second, to a moment in the future when Jesus will return.

We sing marvellous Advent hymns all about looking forward. The anticipation is heightened if you live in a family with young children who are equally expecting a great deal out of Christmas.

The expectation of God is designed to comfort us. Jesus is traditionally portrayed as coming into the world to save the world. Traditional teaching says that we simply need to accept the fact and we are saved. It is all the action of God.

Much the same is true of children’s attitude to Santa. He comes in order to give. There may be vague threats of a lack of generosity should the child be naughty. But Santa is generous and all children have to do is wait and all will be well. For a young child Christmas is truly "magic". There are no presents to buy, nothing to do but wait. I can still remember the magic of going to bed on Christmas Eve and waking to discover that he had been.

Of course, for adults the period leading up to Christmas, far from being a time of eager anticipation, is a time of hard work. An adult knows that if Christmas is going to be good, it has to be prepared for and worked for. As a parent I discover a new joy in Christmas. It comes not in what I receive from a magic father-figure but in what I give as a real father. This is made all the more beautiful when my children don’t even know I am the giver. For them, Santa is the giver. My gift is unacknowledged but I can enjoy watching my children believe the universe is a generous place.

I don’t think I stretch the analogy too far to suggest that the traditional Christian expectation can be somewhat infantile. God came once and saved us, and God will come again and finish the job. All we have to do is accept, believe, trust - rather like children at Christmas time.

Yet there is an alternative attitude to faith that sees Jesus not so much as the divine rescuer, but as a human inspiration. Jesus was a man who inspired his followers to share their possessions with the poor. Jesus was a man who was generous to people who nobody cared about - prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers and Samaritans. Jesus made a difference, not because he thought God would come and sort out the problems of the world but because he worked hard and paid a high price for his actions.

At Advent we should not look into the sky, so to speak, hoping that from there will come our salvation. If God is to come, we are his raw material. Like parents working to give to their children, we have to work for God in this world. The doctrine of incarnation, of God being human, is thus not about a magic event in the past or future. It is about Jesus becoming real in my flesh and in yours.

Those who knew Jesus recognised a divine quality in the way he treated people. His inspiration today is the possibility of a divine quality in the way we live on his behalf.

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