Advent and Christmas Journey
When God formed the first human beings into humanity He knelt down into the grit of things and let the cool clay clump between his fingers and cake on His palms. When He created humankind, He got grit under His fingernails and dust around His wrists. His hands got dirty.
We live our questions, but God always answers with His... Where are you?
I remember when both my babies drew their first breath, life sprawling out, all infant flailing limbs, tiny lungs burning with the filling, tiny arms reaching wildly to be held, to be connected, to be close. I remember it all through a tired haze of exhilaration and joy knit with labouring pain.
There was a silence when we began. The quiet rise and fall of lungs filling with air, the whispered hush of a breath drawn in and a breath exhaled.
He didn’t come to be with us in our ducks-in-a-row existence. He didn't come to be with us in our comfortable and convenient answers. He didn't come to be with us in our neat and tidy church buildings. He didn't come to be with us in our lives on the 'right' side of town. He didn't come to be with us in our righteousness and wealth. He came into our poverty, our want, our pain, our fear, our brokenness. Our need.
But the opposite of fear isn’t courage. Neither is it fearlessness. The opposite of fear is seeing. God with you...
