In my words and actions I testify to the divisive, power-focused, hateful, competitive understandings that surround me – or I testify to the truth of the reign of God.
May we all be drawn there, too. Drawn toward the Love that turned and slept in his mother’s arms. Love that offers us everything and demands from us everything in return. Love that stands against principalities and powers
God will come. That much is sure. He will be here next week. What gifts will we bring? Another Psalm instructs us that, besides our adoration and hymnody, God would like to have our brokeness, the shattered pieces of our scandalous old lives.
How are we going to incubate that spark of Christ that’s in all of us and help the world turn upside down? Maybe we can start by magnifying the Lord and rejoicing in God our savior. Then by getting to work.
When John the Baptist shouts, “Repent!”, he is admonishing us to turn away from the ways of the world, and to turn instead to the practice of love – love of God and love of our neighbor.
The light of the fire he was revealed to others as a follower of Jesus and in that same light he was revealed to himself in a way that he does not like.
…towards the end of his life he began to have doubts about who Jesus was and whether or not there was a coming kingdom. He was in prison, after all. The old authorities were still cruelly in place. In the darkness of prison, John was suddenly not so sure about Jesus.
So, since it’s about halfway through Advent, I think it’s time for me to be less busy and a little bit more patient; to ponder a bit more and struggle a lot less, to look for God in unexpected times and places instead of either shooting up arrow prayers expecting God to take care of them and then rushing off to do something else.
There is something more, something beyond, something larger, if only we can allow our suffering souls to embrace the worst of our pain and then live on through it to the other side. There is something bigger even than death, a belonging that transcends the worst the world can dish out.
What is it that you love about your own anonymous gift-giving? How does the legendary life of Nicholas of Myra help you see God’s goodness in yourself and in the world around you?