re-entry

Yesterday I traveled eight hours home from the beach. As soon as I pulled up in the drive, I noticed the tree sitting darkly in the corner of the den. My boys and Matt greeted me exuberantly. Skip licked at my ankles. 

We gathered around the dinner table, and I heard the stories. On the morning I left for Florida, Sam had awakened with fever and coughing. He was sick most of the week. Joshua was honored with an invite to play Varsity in an upcoming soccer tournament. Skip ruined his coif by rolling in something dead in the common area. 

The lights on the Christmas tree had met an early demise. Matt suspected a blown fuse. We’ve never had this many lights because we’ve never had a tree this fat. Over poppy-seed chicken, we talked about solutions. 

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womb

If Advent means anything in my life, it means to offer space for God to work.

As I understand it, the gospel means that God saved me in my sin and nothing I can do will increase His love for me nor diminish it. As I grow in my faith (sanctification), I can offer ground to Him or in other words offer my life.

This attitude is beautifully demonstrated by Mary the Mother of Jesus. Mary's words show a heart willing to bend to God's plan and a will deeply trusting of God's goodness. "I am the Lord's handmaiden. May it be as you have said." Luke 1:38.

I want more than anything for my life to reflect that sentiment. Sometimes I look around and I cannot see my way clear of the refuse of this fallen world. I don't see a way back to grace. I cannot find a path to peace.

My past (faith) reminds me that God has provided for me and has never left me. He has come through at the last minute or He has acted in surprising ways. This is the soil of my faith. My future (hope) is built on trusting His character. I want to live with that kind of memory and vision and let it shape my present.

These past few days at the beach have given me the space to prepare for Advent. As I wait, I offer the God of the Universe space in my heart to work.

Mary offered her womb - a space for miracles. I want to offer space and wait to see what God will do. This is what Advent means to me.

perspective

One thing the ocean offers me is perspective. I see how large the earth is. I see the line at the far end of the horizon. My creature-hood is undeniable. I am face to face with the reality that a Larger Force rules the Universe.

Webster tells me perspective means "the faculty of seeing all the relevant data in a meaningful relationship."

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like a child

If I am not poor in spirit, Christmas will not come to me. The other morning, I sat reading from my journal of 2011. I felt sad and perplexed that some of my goals had not been realized. I asked Jesus what is up with that. He answered me in my Advent readings with a quote from Oscar Romero. The poem is below:

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even for God - for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

Christmas is a time of giving. We like to think of ourselves as givers. I have been motoring about buying presents, flying through cyberspace bargain hunting. But have I thought of myself as a receiver? 

In Sam’s oral presentation about Christmas for kindergarten, he gushed about how opening presents is our favorite Holiday tradition. He has no misguided self-concept of being a giver. This boy knows how to receive. Tear open the package and dig in. 

As I have grown up, I have forgotten what it is like to receive. If I want Christmas to come, I must open my arms wide to receive the bounty that Christ brings. I must empty myself of all my vein notions and haughty thoughts that I am generous. The truth is that I am needy, broken, destitute. I need grace. 

I want to recover the child-like joy of receiving the Present this Christmas.

holy & human

The Divine wrapped on flesh and entered our world. We celebrate this mammoth event with Christmas. We acknowledge the waiting with Advent. 

I’ve been musing the incarnation. 

As I talked about it with friends, I realized that even the term “incarnation” should be reserved for the event when the seed of God entered a woman and produced Jesus. It is holy. That holy. But what’s got me going is that God’s spirit dwells in me... a sort of little “i” incarnation. Or, let’s don’t call it that, it’s something else. What do we call it? 

In the timeline, after Jesus ministered here on earth, he ascended into Heaven. He said he would not leave us as orphans and he sent the Holy Spirit a little while later. That Holy Spirit indwells me. That’s what it is... an indwelling.

His Spirit communes with my spirit. The spark of life. The holy in the human. 

This morning before dawn, I lit the Winter Forrest candle and turned on the Christmas tree lights. My hands smelled like OxyClean from the t-shirts I soaked in the sink just before I sat down with my Advent book. And I began to read about Zechariah, a herald of Advent. 

The laughter bubbled up from deep within me as I pictured him gesturing wildly to the breathless audience outside the Holy of Holies. You know he went in there at risk to his own life. They put a bell on his robe and a rope around his leg so they could pull him out if he keeled over. He must have jumped so at the sight of Gabriel there by the alter that he almost burned his robe with the incense. Gabriel announced that old man Zechariah would have a son, John the Baptist. Ole Zech didn’t believe. He said, “How can I know this is true?” Gabriel struck him mute because he did not believe. And out Zech goes to try to tell the audience why he can’t speak and why he is wild with anticipation and why his robe is smoldering.

I’m so thankful Zechariah is included in this story and his unbelief is no stumbling block for the gospel. Zechariah is a herald of Advent to us. And if Advent is nothing else, it is the celebration of the collision of the holy and the human.