Advent and Christmas Journey
What we see of human beings on the outside is rarely the full picture. We see behaviours, hear words and observe actions, but each of us live inside a personal history and psyche full of doubts, fears, assumptions and emotional habits all fuelling our visible behaviours, but rarely visible to ourselves, let alone those around us...
Sometimes this compass is so astonishingly upside down! How can it possibly point to true North? The directions we are accustomed to navigating life by dictate in our veins retaliation and revenge: From playgrounds to families to communities to government policy, when we take a hit we hit back. It’s a matter of pride, of reflex, of not looking weak, of saving face. This is simply (post the fall) how our world works. How we are programmed to think our world works...
God’s original plan for His creation was always faithfulness. His faithfulness mirrored by ours… like diamond-reflected-light splashing around everywhere. But we, all of us on this earth right here and now, comprehend daily that this world is not the one He created for us. We are not the human beings He created us to be. Not fully. Not yet...
We live in a natural world. But also a supernatural one. A world where wars rage in the material as well as the spiritual. We may think the weapons of Spiritual warfare are complex, exotic or strange. But actually nothing could be further from the truth.
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 is a story written into the core of us by the very hand of God.
‘How long o Lord’ the psalmist sings, and our human hearts echo his words. As years roll on with pain and disappointment and darkness. How long Lord? How long?
The psalmist, he knew this song because his people had lived it. Waiting on God. For, how long?
There are days when ‘how long’ feels like too long.
Scars. We have them, and not just on the outside, numb lumps of tissued skin, but within us, numb lumps of scarring memory pushed into the recesses of our hearts, unseen, where we can pretend they don’t exist. And there they remain, silent, but still at work in every thought, word and action of our existence.
Abram, his name meant ‘exalted father’.
But he wasn’t.
A father...
How do I look this child in the face and tell her everything is going to be okay, when the reality all around her says it's not? When her nine year old frame spins on a planet full of poverty and pain and she knows more than most what this means.
There were two gardens. Two gardens in this long tread of time. And God walked in them both. So did frail humanity, humanity forged in the image of God forgetting themselves and forsaking God. This is the story of the first garden, but only part of the story of the second.
And here, echoing down through time is one of the greatest stumbling blocks humankind has when it gazes into the possibility of the existence of God. How can a good God allow human suffering? How can struggle and pain and suffering be God's will?
But the opposite of fear isn’t courage. Neither is it fearlessness. The opposite of fear is seeing. God with you...
Hate may look strong and successful in the short term. But it never wins in the long run of things. Malice may win some battles, but it’s love who wins the war. Eventually. Always. Because God is on His throne, even when all we can see is the dark.
Day 13 Fight “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and... Continue Reading →
God sees and hears the pain we live in, in the womb of this unravelling world, and He weaves His grace around us to restore us to ourselves. This God sees. This God hears.
