No answers: Advent Day 8

There are days when you feel you are just mouthing the words to something you don't really understand anymore. There are days when the sun of your hopes sinks behind the mountain of hurt looming large, and you walk in the shadows. There are days when the rounds of laundry and dishes and paperwork swallow up the laughter, when you look around at the word-wounded, the lonely, the poor, the dying, the rejected, the left behind, and you have nothing more to say. 

For all the big plans, for all the good intentions, for all you know you are supposed to say and do, sometimes Christmas is just about surviving. Sometimes the fear behind all that pain just swallows up the joy. 

And then it is easy to just go shopping. To bury all that sorrow under a mound of presents. To feed it lots of chocolate and sugar. To play bright music and cover the world with color and sparkle. To pretend you are a child again, innocent, happy; to fulfill every desire for every thing you ever wanted. 

Except that one thing. That aching thing that just won't go away. 

For that, you have to wait. 

You have to keep giving the sacrifice, day after day. You have to keep mouthing the words. You have to stand still under a night sky as vast and heavy as all your disappointment, and you have to look up.

And then God comes when you least expect it. Maybe you hear angel voices or see a star you never saw before. And you can choose to listen and believe and follow. You can take those incredulous, halting steps to a stable where a baby sleeps. And is this really the way God meets us? In the muck? In a nowhere place with a bunch of nobodies? As a helpless nobody himself?

But then you touch him. You feel the tiny weight of him in your arms and you think, This is God. And you sit aghast in the knowledge that the God who formed universes wanted to come this way, to fit in the crook of your elbow just so, and to be held. 

There is a longing in a God who comes like that. A yearning. And there are no easy answers. But there is a God who put on skin, who pushed his way small and bloody into our world, who grew up poor and walked dusty roads and slept in strange places. A God who touched our sores, who put his arms around our little ones, who struggled with his family, who made both friends and enemies.

There is a God who lived a whole life here and conquered it. All for love of us. He defeated death, but first he lived a life. Our life.

There are no easy answers, but he doesn't ask us to have answers. He asks us to follow the light, step into the stable, and hold him near. He asks us to sit still with him and let him be with us. 

He longs for us, yearns for us. If we wait for him, he will come.