It's here. The season many love and others dread. This year, more perhaps than others, a frisson of apprehension or excitement surrounds the close of all the lost hopes, upset dreams, and upside down life that this year held. Christmas lights came up early as if families are trying to hasten the inevitable by bright bulbs that do little to dispel the darkness. Bing Crosby croons his way through the shopping malls as retail stores endeavour vainly to recapture the traditional time when red gives way to black.
In the darkness of a Bethlehem night a gift came, the greatest gift, yet the packaging affronted all the expectations this advent entailed. Emmanuel came. The world He came to rejected Him. We reject Him still. He came serving, challenging, convicting. We want nice packages wrapped in bows, pats on the back and a host of good feelings. He came with a sword to divide. Everything He is we desperately need and yet we push Him away, demanding that He come on our terms. Turning to the lives spread around us, we distance from them as well. Choosing our safe isolation not realising that resiliency and strength are born through adversity. To lay down in the manger, to take up our cross, is to find that we can love beyond ourselves.
In a year full of unsettlement the light can shine brighter. How am I pushing Him away when He appears in ways I do not understand? Can I press in to the hard places, find hope in dark times, and trust when my heart is breaking in two? Beyond the fears and false hopes that a million other ways offer, can you see Him coming down into your broken world with the promise that in His arms all will be well? He's here.
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