Welcome to the Ransom Dark Podcast. I'm Alan Arnold and as you can hear from the

music in the background we've officially entered into the Christmas season.

It's the first week of December and we have something

really special planned for the next four weeks. It's an Advent series that originally

aired in 2014 with John Eldridge and Craig McConnell. It's so good to hear Craig's voice

again, his laughter, his insights and just the conversation between John and

Craig on how to enter into and fully experience

Advent. The first of the four-part series is titled The Disruptive Invitation. Now here's John and Craig.

Friends, welcome to the Ransom Park Podcast, John Eldridge and Craig McConnell.

I'm cracking up because did you know it was had been?

Oh lights are up got the tree? No none of that you are full of it. I know your tree is not up. I've had a cup of eggnog already.

Yeah. No, gosh, particularly this year with Thanksgiving so late,'s just boom exactly here it is and it's a

little disruptive just in terms of the schedule isn't it just had turkey and the family and boom here we are it's Advent. Boom.

Talk about disruption. I forget what market I was in grocery shopping the other day and

they had the Christmas music going, you know, full blast and it was so disruptive to me. It's like, wait, what? Like it felt like an intrusion into my normal operations, you know?

Advent feels like an intrusion into normal life. It is. I always feel ambivalent because you know all

the trappings of Christmas I didn't do good budgeting for this year's Christmas

again and you know I love the family time I love so much of what's a part of

Christmas and yet there's that feeling

that none of this has anything to do with Christmas and so the disruption is

more than just calendar. It's internal of wanting this Christmas as I have the

last 40 to be something different. There is a disruptiveness even to the church kind of seizing upon an entire season to say you are now in the celebration of Advent, right?

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