Breath. Can you feel it? Most of us are churning. Spinning. Pulsing. We’ve been sleeping poorly for a month. We’re wildly on our game. Because there’s so much to do. We’re trying so hard to capture it all. It’s all good. Very good. So much of it is magical. How could it not be? We are forming and beginning new memories. We are reenacting and rehearsing traditions, memories, sensations and smells which have been embedded in our hearts since we were kids. Our recollections are heightened in this season. We remember uncles and grandparents, trees in our childhood homes, trimmed with strands of colorful handmade artistry we can’t quite remember how to imitate. We remember the sound of the best stemware brought out for close friends and relatives in town from other states. Again, this year, it’s been beautiful. Almost every pre-dawn, I walk my dog Bali past the lane where most of the wagon wheel’s are lit in every color. We’ve had good times with friends, burning firewood often and listening to exceptional Christmas music. I’ve had a dozen of Starbuck’s new Chestnut Praline Lattes; which taste oddly like a cereal I can’t quite remember. Carly is home. Amy and Cody have a baby on the way. We have seen this season through the eyes of our two beautiful grandchildren. We even spent a long weekend in New York City and skated in Central Park for free. It has all been very, very good. …And yet there is an unspoken undercurrent going on inside of me. As much as I try to anticipate it and prepare against it, it shows up, every season, waiting to be fed. Expectation. It goes like this: “God, if I gather myself up and pour myself into the best programs, gatherings, parties, drives, dinners, gifts, even daily spiritual recitations, that I might experience the optimum Christmas, for myself and my family.” It might truly surprise us that the only one who really has no increased expectations for this season-is Jesus. He knows me. He knows what satisfies my heart. He knows what gives me peace. He knows all my fears, my suppressed financial worries, the haunting sense that I may have missed what I was supposed to do with my life, that I’ve failed Him and don’t know who to tell. He knows I don’t believe fully what I claim to believe. He knows your angst that because you have trusted your life to God, you should by now, be better, know better, feel better. And none of it changes how He feels about you. Not one bit. So, He continues to be the one giving the best gifts. He comes to us. Now. Right now. He doesn’t demand that you find the right places. He arranges where to meet you. He makes the two of you the place to be. These meetings are marked out on His calendar. Sometimes in places where you’d least expect it. He never forgets to find you. And He knows where to find you-wound up, preoccupied, distracted, dissapointed. He knows how to reach your heart, when you feel cold, guarded or aloof. For He loves you more than ten thousand yet unnamed galaxies. When Isaiah found himself writing down that Jesus would be called Immanuel-“God with us”, nearly 3000 years ago, it was not a slogan for a season. It was a promise. It is still a promise. You cannot shake Him, you cannot lose Him with wrong choices, you cannot miss Him by missing out. For if He was able to die on a Cross and rise again for you-if He was able to wipe out all sin in simple response to your clumsy, erratic, mumbled choice of faith-then He is fully able to find you right here, right now. So Jesus meets you in the now. Immanuel is no longer in another time, in another part of the world…distant and inaccessible. He is where you stand. He whispers, “Peace. I know you. I formed you. I love you with a love you have no words for…These words I’m speaking to you, so that in Me, you might have peace. In Me. You may draw freely and continually into who I am. I am enough. I am fulfillment. I am joy, calm amid the storm, light in darkness. I was there when your memories were formed. And I am here for these new memories. All my love is yours. All my security and protection is yours. I am the center of the party. When you are with me, you are the center of the best place in the universe. You need not fear missing out. If there somewhere better than the now, with us together, don’t you think I might take us there? I will not hold out on you. I have every calendar date marked.” Peace. That inner sense that nothing external can destroy or improve upon. That it is well with your soul. That while pain and sadness may surround you, you carry deep life to transcend it. Wholeness which says you are enough, that you have nothing to prove, no one to envy or judge. You are loved by the Only One who truly matters. And He has nowhere else He wants to be but here, with you. How can this be? But it is. He says, “Rest in my love. I have no false expectations of you tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Enjoy me and all the others I surround you with, just as you are. Smile, stand by the fire, next to those who believe Jesus is more than a story, light a candle, listen to how it all happened. And breath. I’ve got this. In this scary, unpredictable world which can frighten your dreams. In this world you shall have tribulation. I’m sorry. For awhile longer, you shall have tribulation; illness, shocking news, chronic things, broken relationships, disappointment, growing limitation. But take courage.” Here it is, the one thing you get to do: You get to choose courage. Not a courage you must conjure. For it is in you now. It too is a gift from who you are in Christ. You have courage. Close your eyes for a moment and ask God to give you grace to choose it. Trust God in this moment. He wouldn’t ask it of you if He couldn’t supply it. In the midst of everything you fear and want and miss. Courage. It is not wishful thinking. Your courage is packed in these words from Jesus: “I have overcome the world. The worst you fear could happen, or has happened. It can’t get far enough inside to define you. I have overcome it. You’re welcome, dear child of mine.” Soon, we will disperse. You will sing the last song, hug those around you, sink your hands deep into your coat and walk away from this fire and out into the night air. But the cold will not envelop you or define you. For you are Christ in you. Then He Himself will take a deep breath and meet your eyes with His. “Lets go. I’ve got this.”
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:13:00 +0000
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