Held

You came to be held.

This is what I keep coming back to this Christmas. You, very God, slipping from the womb of a terrified teenage girl, wriggling, wet, squalling in the cold night. Held.

Tiny fists flailing helplessly. Eyes unfocused, not yet able to even see the world you made. Mouth grasping for nourishment. Skin wrinkled, soft, and pale. The crown of your head misshapen by your birth.

While we, the weary lost, cast our hearts upward and waited for the brilliant breaking in of Your glory, You slipped in weak among us. Yes, You rose into our dark with the brightness of a new star, and those who were watchful saw. You sang to us Your message, and those who were quiet heard. You whispered to hearts a promise to appear, and those who were waiting received.

But mostly we waited in darkness, unaware while You came. Wrapped thick in our longings, we did not know that You came to be held. You needed us. To speak to You, clothe You, feed You, touch You. You came so we would raise You up among us, teach You our ways. You, the living Word, came unable to speak and received our own language. You came to sleep under our stars, walk our dusty paths, live our simple life of longing and love.

You came to be ours so we could be Yours.

We held You. Tiny. Fragile. Beating heart, grasping fingers, hungry cry. Clumsy hearts full of pride and desire, we took You in and rejected You by turns. We wounded You as we have wounded one another since the beginning. We made You our own.

We held close Your new tiny body, and a few years later we held it again, the body that we broke. The crown of Your head misshapen by our hatred. We held in our very hands the fact of Your life and death among us.

You let Yourself be held so You could hold us.

When You slipped from our grasp and rose from us, the waiting began again. And here we are now, still wrapped in our longings, bewildered, hurting, weary hearts seeking upward for the breaking in of Your glory. When will You return? When will Your light crush this tide of darkness?

The mystery of this Advent, this waiting, is that You are coming and yet You have come. You are here with us even as we wait for You. You hold us even in our longing to see Your face, touch Your robe. You speak to us even as we fill heaven with our cries. You slip in to be with us even as we wonder where you are.

You are the One who helps us to wait for You. You come to the watchful, the quiet, the waiting. To those who look.

To those who look.

Open our hearts to see You.

Tent pitching

I can’t help wondering what it was like. To be in that stable. To be an exhausted teenage girl struggling through the terrors of giving birth, an equally terrified man at your side, and then suddenly to hold him, to look down at God in your arms.

What glory must have filled that place? What would it be like to be the first one to hold him, to be so proud and awed and humbled and frightened all at once?

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

That phrase, “dwelt among us,” literally means he “pitched his tent.” He pitched his tent among us. Why would God use this picture?

I’ve been thinking about the Hebrew slaves, newly released from captivity. They were free, but they were not yet home. And God knew they had a long way to go to get there. He knew they faced years of wandering in the wilderness. They would face enemies and giants and hunger and weariness and despair. They would fall and fail and fall again.

But they would also see miracles and beauty and joy, and they would throw some really great parties. Because God was with them. He had pitched the tent of his presence right there in their midst. “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst” (Ex. 25:8). He set up his tent and came into it, and it was full of his glory (Ex. 40:34).

Why didn’t God come to a palace or a mansion? We asked our students. Who is welcome there? “Only the best people,” a girl whispered.

Only the worthiest could pluck up the nerve to walk to the door of God’s mansion and feel welcome. And none of us are worthy.

That’s why he comes to us. God, he wants to dwell in our midst. He pitches his tent right there next to yours and says, “I’m with you. I’m here.” He knows we could never walk up to the door of his house, so he comes to ours. He becomes a baby so we can hold him. He grows up among us so we can know him.

Times got tough for Moses and he got pretty frustrated. He asked God, “Are you with us, or not?” And God replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Ex. 33:14).

Sounds a lot like a man who told us, “Come to me, all who are burdened and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt. 11:28).

When God is with us, he brings light and life. He brings hope. We can come to him because he came to us. He knows we have a wilderness to wander through before we are home. He knows there are giants to face. But he also knows there is a Promised Land that is just beyond, and when we get there, all this suffering will find its shape and these earthly tents will fall away to reveal the glory he has purposed all along. That’s why we can expect miracles and look for joy and throw some really great parties.

You are free. But you are not yet home. But in the meantime, here he is. He’s pitched his tent in your yard, and he’s inviting you in to rest.

I almost missed Advent

Yesterday Advent began and I almost missed it.

Last night I stood under a bedazzle of millions of Christmas lights all dancing to music blaring through the streets, all the glitter and noise celebrating US! And our stuff! And fun! Welcome to the season of eating and spending and all our desires fulfilled! I stood agape with the rest of the crowd and felt the Christmas frenzy coming on. 

 

Around the corner from the party a quiet street held the obligatory nativity. No dancing lights here, no blaring music. As if the creators of the show somehow knew that here was a sacred thing. Though the scene was fake and even a bit cheesy, that place somehow for me became holy. This was not a place to be profaned by our noisy self-worship.

A crazy thought. What if these thousands of people celebrating suddenly stopped and knelt at the manger? What if we all went together to this holy place? What if we hushed our hearts to listen? What would we see? What would we hear?

Advent. Coming. A season for reflecting upon the coming of Christ into our world. This is a holy time. That chaos and noise and frenzied search for meaning? That’s exactly what He came to enter into. To stop us. Still us. Show us the way.

He came that long ago time to those whose hearts were ready. Shepherds standing under the endless, quiet sky. Wise men searching that same sky for promise, for hope. Anna and Simeon, waiting in the temple for God to speak. And a terrified mother and father, gazing with bewildered wonder at the God in their arms.

He came to be touched. Held. Heard. Known. He is still coming. It’s easy to miss Him when the world beckons and bedazzles. It is easy to lose Advent when the demands of life press in.

This is when we must press into Him.

Nations are in uproar and kingdoms fall, but God is coming to save us and make us glad. He calls us to “Be still, and know that I am God.” When we are still, then HE is exalted (Psalm 46).

Stillness is a choice. Pressing in is a discipline. Advent is the perfect time to step into the holy hush of His coming. Miracles might be waiting for us in the quiet. Rest might restore us to the God who calls for us.

When the loud lures, let’s step around the corner into the stillness of His presence. He is here, and He has been here all along. He always comes for us, if we will let Him.

Falling: Advent Day 19

Magi

Matthew 2

I am a king-maker. A wisdom-wielder. A keeper of dark mystery. 

For hundreds of years we have shaped the world. One might even say we have controlled it. Men seek us out. They rely on our wisdom for guidance, as they have for generations. I understand ambition. I know well the pull for prominence, the quest for power. I have seen kingdoms rise and fall. I have watched men ruin each other and all they live for. I have myself lusted, devoured, plundered, and destroyed.

And then came the star. This thing so bright, so unmistakably new, dominating the night sky. We knew. Here is a great power. Something to change the world. 

Some of us searched the old, dark ways. But some of us readied for the pilgrimage we did not realize we had been waiting for. For there are promises we have clutched close in secret, remembering a people who offered a better way. 

Prophecies of a king. 

This star is what drove me across long deserts and days in search of the source of such a light. Night after night the light of that star burned into me, driving me on. For too long the things I hold inside me have darkened my heart, sickened my very soul. I feel myself rotting away, crumbling to dust inside my trophy walls, my gilded life. 

I am not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this.

I didn't look for peace in a peasant's hut. I wasn't seeking strength in the composure of a quiet girl. I did not expect to find such joy in a powerless place, such glory in this stillness.

But I know a King when I see one. 

And I know holiness when I step into the presence of something that sears the soul, that instantly exposes me for the fraud I know I am. And though I tower over this Child, I find myself collapsing before Him, face to the earth. 

Ashamed. Elated. Afraid. Hopeful. Undone.

How do you describe this feeling of being scooped out, scoured clean by love? How explain the emptiness filled by light, like a dark sky lit by a star you could never imagine? Like a longing burning its way through every thread and thought and breath until you feel you might die of it? Like a death and a rebirth all at once? 

How do you offer this King the gift you are now ashamed of? How do you get up off that patch of dirt where you belong and go back to the shadowlands? How do you tell this craving, thirsting, grasping people that they have it all wrong, that there is this holy hollowing, that the way lies not in rising but in falling? 

I do not know, but the falling is where it begins. The falling before Him and the giving way, again and again, to this surrendering. 

On whom his favor rests: Advent day 10

Shepherd

Luke 2

He was good at watching.

He had to be. Once he had fallen asleep on his watch and several sheep had been lost. He didn't want to fight off those wild dogs again--or endure the angry muttering of the others. 

Watching was about the only thing they were allowed to do these days. The world didn't like shepherds. Maybe because they smelled like sheep. Maybe because of their poverty and powerlessness. Maybe because they reminded people of something they didn't want to know. 

The world needed someone to step on, someone to take the heat of their scorn. They moved around the shepherds distastefully, acknowledging their necessity but rejecting their need. And so the shepherds watched, together in the knowledge that they were unwanted, unnoticed, and alone.

He had gradually come to accept the nobody status. Most days, out in the field with no one but sheep to talk to, he felt like a nobody. But then there were these nights with the million million stars pressing down. There were the drinks from the cool stream and the wind rushing through tall grass. There were thoughts he didn't know how to express or to whom to express them. Some nights, like tonight, he found himself holding his breath, waiting, though he didn't know why. 

Then the angel appeared with brightness unendurable. He and the others cowered, pressing themselves into the earth they knew and not daring to look up. The angel said what angels almost always say. "Do not be afraid."

Your life was formed of fear, but not anymore. You don't have to be afraid.

"I bring you good news!" This is no accident. God has come directly to you--you outcasts--to tell you the greatest news in the history of the world. 

God is here. Right over there, in fact, just a few miles away. He has come, and you are invited to go see. You.

One angel isn't enough for this kind of announcement. Thousands and thousands of them now, sky light as day, voices splitting the night with music. How could the whole world not hear, not wake to see this? But only those who watch for him will be ready when he comes. 

"Glory to God! Peace to those on whom his favor rests."

That means you. Yes you, cowering there behind your sheep. Peace. His favor rests on you.

Go and see him. He's a shepherd, just like you, and he will be an outcast too. The world will move around him and rage at him and scorn him to death. And he will be the one who watches over you and saves you from the wild dogs. 

Go and see him, and find your voice. His love will make you brave, will give you words to tell the world. 

God is here, and nothing will ever be the same.

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.

A new name: Advent Days 4 & 5

Elizabeth

"Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!" (Luke 1:45)

Barren.

That name had been hers for so long that she didn't know how to let go of it, how to not be that woman, empty, dried-up, hollowed-out with sorrow. 

She knew God could still use her, a barren woman. She served him in all the ways she could, doing things for other women that they often couldn't do for themselves. Because they had children. Because God had visited them and not her. Blessed them and not her. 

But he had blessed her. Her life was rich, even without children. She had even found a measure of peace in her old age.  She believed in her God, believed he would someday show her why. 

Still, her childlessness was like a robe she wore. An identity. Elizabeth, the barren woman. It was who she was. The emptiness was an ache in her, a sorrow that was now simply a part of things. 

But now. Now Zachariah looked at her every day with mute wonder. Now they couldn't stop smiling. Now she felt her womb swelling with life, and she realized that all along she had been waiting--holding her breath--for this. 

When Mary came and the baby within her leaped for joy, all those empty places in her flooded with light. God. In this woman, in this very room, overshadowing them with holy fear. 

These two mothers--one of a herald, one of a king--huddled in that holy place and watched the coming of God. In the waiting a love swelled and grew, a light that would fill the barren land and the empty, dried-up hearts of a people hollowed-out with sorrow.

And of course the name of her son would be John. His message--that God remembers, God rescues, God redeems his lost children--would begin with his name, spoken as a promise fulfilled. A name on the lips of a people who needed to know.

God is gracious.

No more words: Advent Days 2 & 3

Zacharias

Words, words, words. 

Sometimes he felt that all he did was speak words no one believed anymore, words he himself struggled to cling to.

He was a man of reason. He had been as faithful as he knew how to be, earnestly following the teachings he had received. Even under the heavy rule of the Roman Empire. Even in the years of Elizabeth's barrenness. Even when he watched many of those he served halfheartedly participating in these religious rites, knowing they were only playing along. He saw that they had long ago lost faith, though they didn't realize it. He had continued to seek God, for himself and for these lost children. He knew how to speak the faith he wasn't always sure he possessed. He knew how to say the words that would soothe troubled hearts, though not his own. He clung to the words as his only lifeline.

It wasn't as though he were asking for great things. He only wanted what other men had. That gleam in the eye when they spoke of their sons. The joy of leading his boys to the temple to teach them the ways of God. The laughter of scooping up a giggling girl with golden hair. Those little arms around the neck. Those earnest questions. The roughhousing, the boisterous meals, the songs in the dark at bedtime. These things seemed even more precious than the freedom they all longed for.

He had watched it all unfold around him again and again. He had served these families as their priest for many years, seen the children grow up and begin families of their own. And each day he had lived with the knowledge that they spoke of him in whispers, shook their heads and wondered what he had done to earn God's disapproval. Each day he went to his quiet home, his faithful wife, and tried not to question God.

He had long ago given up asking for a son. He had accepted the look of pious pity in the faces of his congregation. He no longer expected joy. He had stopped praying for the deliverance of his people. 

Now he was just waiting. 

He didn't know what he was waiting for, exactly. He still believed in this God he served day after day. He knew that God was there. He had felt it, experienced it in ways he couldn't describe. But he didn't understand this God. He wasn't sure this God understood him. So he just did his duty, waiting to see if God would show up. He was old enough now to look forward to death and to the end of all his questions. To peace. He read the words again and again, spoke them over and over as a wall to hold back the tide of despair. And when the people came to him, broken, confused, afraid, he gave them the only answers he knew. But lately those answers had begun to ring hollow.

His turn came to burn incense before the Lord. He prepared the sacrifice that would burn continually throughout the day, thinking of how it symbolized the prayers of the people going up to God as a sweet fragrance. A pleasing aroma. What exactly would God be pleased about? he wondered. The halfhearted prayers of a people poor and oppressed, a people who hadn't heard from their God in hundreds of years? And maybe this God is just a God who takes and never gives, who commands worship but who never responds. 

When he looked up and saw the angel, the fear came from knowing the angel saw right through to his very soul, and he instantly felt that all his thoughts were lies and that he was longing for something he didn't understand. He felt the weight of God's presence. He felt his frame of dust crumbling under all that glory. 

But the angel did not strike nor condemn. "Do not be afraid, Zacharias. Your prayer is heard."

The words washed over him like pure love, like power. And as the angel described the son he would bear--he, a father!--he could only think of his faithlessness. He was afraid. How could he be the one to father such a child? 

Words sprang from his fear. "How shall I know this? I am an old man, and my wife is old also."

And Gabriel said, "I stand in the presence of God. I was sent by him to tell you these glad things. And because you did not believe my words, you will be mute and not able to speak."

So Zacharias was given a pregnancy of his own.* His wife's belly swelled and the people marveled and whispered. All the while this unspeakable joy swelled and grew within him, this holy stillness. Words were taken from him and for once he didn't have to have the answers. God himself was the answer. And God was coming, he realized, because God had been there all along. It was they who had stopped looking. His unbelief was silenced as the wonder of it all filled him. In the quiet God came near. 

Finally the day came, and oh, holy miracle, a son. And more than a son. Hope. Life. Salvation. And all those words that had been building in Zacharias came out like a flood, and he said things he didn't even know he knew, things that could only come from God, and his words held the life of belief. His words didn't have to be enough, because the One who was coming, he was The Word, and it was all we would ever need. Now his words could simply praise, rising up like a sweet fragrance of faith. 

All those days of emptiness? The hours of waiting? They filled with purpose and holy joy. The people who had whispered judgment now cried aloud at the grace of God. And had things been any different--had Elizabeth borne children at an early age, had Zacharias kept his speech--well then the miracle would have slipped by unnoticed. The sunrise is always brightest after the darkest night. The things he had longed for paled in light of what he had been given. This God of love offered far more than he had ever desired.

He still does. He is here in the waiting if we only silence our words, let the space become pregnant with his presence. He has come and is coming.

* From "Annunciation" by Kathleen Noris, taken from Watch for the Light, Orbis, 2011

Seedlings in the dark: Advent day 1

Four hundred years of silence.

A people can grow weary after waiting that long. A people can lose heart, miss the way. A people can despair. A world shrouded in darkness can make a people forget what light ever looked like, can make them wonder if there ever was a light at all. And waiting can go on until it becomes a way of life, until it becomes tradition, until it is no longer waiting at all.

It is forgetting.

A people who have forgotten what God sounds like no longer wait for him. They live in fear of themselves, of each other, of the past and the future, and they cannot wait because waiting feels like doing nothing. "When we are afraid, we want to get away from where we are."*

But there is a small remnant of those who still wait. There is a promise they cling to. "They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow . . . We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. It is always a movement from something to something more."*

History may have recorded four hundred years of silence, but these hearts did not. They heard God. And in the darkness they were waiting, not passively, but in the moment, present in the belief that God was near.

He had already come. And so they were ready. Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Simeon, Anna . . . they were watching for the light because it shone already in their hearts.

Advent: expectant waiting and preparation for the coming of Christ.

We mark his coming more like a forgetting than a remembering. We fill up our darkness with all kinds of noisy celebration, but I wonder if we are really waiting for him.

He's coming, you know. His coming has begun in us. There are tendrils uncurling in the darkness, seedlings reaching for the light. Will we be ready to receive him?

* Henri Nouwen, "Waiting for God." From Watch for the Light, Orbis, 2011

Hush of the holy

"I'm actually just looking forward to January."

My friend says this frankly with a smile of weariness. It's only December 8 and the Christmas pressure is just too much. I find myself nodding in understanding.

The Christmas festivities that are meant to be fun pile together into this suffocating to-do list that seems to take on a life of its own, shadowing us with this malevolent promise: if you don't get this list done, your Christmas is a failure. Gifts to shop for and wrap and mail, cards to send, food to make. Parties to plan for and attend, concerts to enjoy, trips to go on, decorations to put up. And in the midst, regular life barrels along at its regular breakneck pace.

And yet we continue, year after year, to plunge into the Christmas craziness. Why? What is it that compels us to create such chaos of our world?

What does it all mean?

A good question.

I love the Christmas chaos, actually. And when I think of why, I see there is this hush beneath it all, this place of wonder and joy.

The hush of the holy.

Advent is a time when the barriers of time and place grow thin. God comes near, we feel His breath, and we touch a little piece of eternity.

That baby in a manger. That virgin mother. Those shepherds standing bewildered beneath a chorus of angels. Wise men traveling across years and continents to worship a tiny child.

God is with us. These things speak of hope and miracles. They remind us of the love that made this world and came among us to rescue it. And for a little while, we slow and we still, and we enter the holy.

Except when we don't.

When the celebrations replace the Child, the holy becomes hectic.

When we stress instead of still, we miss the story.

There is a reason every child loves Christmastime and a reason we want our children to love it. For a little while life becomes less ordinary, and we create reasons to celebrate and be together. We sing special songs. We surround ourselves with meaningful objects and memory-filled traditions. We tell stories in whispers, stay up late, eat more. 

We want a reason to rejoice. 

I think the specialness, the set-apartness, of this time is good and freeing and meaningful. But what is really important during Advent? In the end, what will stay with us? What do I want to remember? What do I want my children to remember?

I want to enter the holy. I want His gift to be the only gift that matters.

I doubt the weariness will go away. I know the chaos will clamor to consume us. But we can choose not to let it. We can choose to let these things usher us to the Christ child, and we can let go of the things that don't.

Slow.

Still.

Enter the holy.

Made of love

I'm writing a story to my kids about the Christmas narrative, starting from the very beginning--at creation. I'm trying to imagine the perspective of an angel looking on as God speaks the words that bring the world into being, and suddenly I'm stunned by a thought. 

The world is made of love. 

Literally. God made us because He just couldn't stand not to (at least that's what I think). He dreamed us up and He so wanted to love us that He just had to create. And His love is so huge and strong and beautiful that the words just came spilling out, like an artist inspired. And here it all is. A whole world made of love. 

What other force could have dreamed of skies spread thick with silver stars, mountains piled up like craggy fortresses, rivers sparkling, life teeming, all of earth yearning upward in this glorious song?

Have you ever stood at the ocean's edge at sunrise, watching that burst of light breaking through where sky and water meet? Have you stood on a mountaintop looking out over wave after wave of frosty peaks?

Every day He declares Himself to us over and over in a million creative ways (Psalm 19). His creation shouts, whispers, sings to us of His love. 

Yes, we made a wreck of it. Yes, we are all dying, and this world is dying with us. But just like a shoot growing from a stump (Isaiah 11), His love is the pulse of life that keeps springing upward no matter how we trample it down. 

He won't be outdone. Circumstances may try to convince you otherwise. But this Christmas, I hope you will breathe in the love your world is made of. I hope you will come to Jesus. 

I hope you see shoots growing from stumps. 


Here is the link to my children's Christmas story--one each day until Christmas!

Jesse Tree Journey: What the Angels Saw

I have done the Jesse Tree stories for the past few Christmases with my kids. This year I wanted to bring the stories a bit more to their level, creating a storyline that would pull all of the Jesse Tree Bible stories together in a fun way. This story is my attempt to do that. I am happy to share it with you!

I incorporate the ornaments with our advent calendar. Each day the kids open the “door” on our calendar and pull out the ornament that is inside. Then we read the story together. There are some great ideas for making your own ornaments on pinterest, or I think you can Google ornaments to purchase. I just printed out paper images and glued them to cardboard—cheap but effective. 

I hope you and your family will enjoy sharing this journey with us. I will post the entries Please be patient as I am writing the story as we go along and I’m not quite sure where it will take me. I’m excited to find out!

I will post the daily entries below. Have fun!

Introduction to the Jesse Tree

December 1: The Plan