9 December

On the Journey

                            Advent and Christmas remind me—

              The seasons of Advent and Christmas remind me to anticipate an unexpected encounter with God in the midst of an ordinary day. These seasons of anticipation encourage me to resist the temptation to perceive the lives we live as simply ordinary. It is important for us to resist this temptation, for if we are to believe the stories surrounding the birth of Jesus found in Matthew and Luke, we must accept the possibility that God chooses to intrude upon the lives of ordinary people to reveal His divine purposes for all humanity. These stories of the first Christmas also remind me of the significance of how we react to the holy appearing in the midst of the ordinary.

              Zechariah reminds me to be prepared to set aside my skepticism and doubts when I encounter the holy intruding into ordinary. As a priest, surely Zechariah knew of the stories of the Old Testament that shaped the life of God’s people. If he could have remembered only one those stories in the moment of his encounter with Gabriel, he would have known that he was not the first old man with a barren wife to be promised a son in his old age. The covenantal history of the Hebrew people is grounded in the birth of a promised child, Isaac, to an old man, Abraham, and a barren woman, Sarah. As with Zechariah, God continues to challenge our assumptions of what is possible. During this season, we need to remember the words—all things are possible with God.

              Mary, too, instructs me to be prepared for a divine encounter in the midst of an ordinary day. The images etched on our memories when we are children may endure for most of a lifetime. At some point in my childhood before the age of 5, I encountered a painting depicting Mary’s encounter with the angel, Gabriel. I don’t believe the painting was by any of the great masters. In fact, it may have been one of those Sunday School pictures that adorned the walls of classrooms in most Baptist churches in a day now forgotten. The picture portrayed Mary as a young maiden in a barn. There was hay strewn across the floor. There was a cow and a three-legged stool turned over on its side. Light shone through a window, and Gabriel, with a kind face and white beard, peered down on Mary who was before him on her knees. The painting implies that Gabriel interrupted Mary while in the midst of a routine chore on an ordinary day. If a young peasant girl of Nazareth could respond appropriately to such a divine encounter, she reminds me to prepare myself for an obedient response to God’s intrusion into my day.

              God’s intrusion into our ordinary lives may appear in the presence of people we regularly ignore. To this day, the Great Church wrestles with the divine choice of lowly shepherds to spread the message abroad of the birth of a Messiah in Bethlehem on that first Christmas. These shepherds continue to bear witness across the centuries that they found the Christ child just as the angel had told them. Sometimes the people God chooses as His messengers surprise us. Ironically, in a scientific world that casts doubts upon the existence of angels, most of us would believe in the appearance of angel before we would accept the witness of a modern day shepherd—a person at the edges of society and religion. In this season of Advent and Christmas, I am reminded to receive every stranger as a possible messenger from God.

              Though the wise men did not arrive on that first Christmas night, they remind me that people from other nations and cultures may open my eyes to the presence of God in the midst of the world in which we live together. These messengers from distant lands remind me that this Christ child is not just for certain people but for all people.

              Advent and Christmas remind me once again that God’s ways are not my ways nor are God’s thoughts my thoughts. Advent and Christmas call me to repentance. You see most days I am consumed by the living of my ordinary days. Living these ordinary days, I am often oblivious to the love of God that permeates the world and the people around me. Fulfilling the responsibilities of my ordinary days, I sometimes forget that the kingdom of God lies within me. Living my ordinary life alongside so many others living their ordinary lives, I sometimes forget that an appearance of God might transform not only our ordinary lives, but everything we assume is ordinary about the whole universe.

              Advent and Christmas encourage me to turn my life toward God and to live my ordinary days with an abiding trust in the powers of faith, hope, and love. In a journey that began last Advent, I have learned in the past year that there are days when only faith is able to sustain you. There is no way to explain your willingness to continue to live, except that you are possessed by an assurance of the presence of the One in whom we trust and a conviction that things unseen are real. There are other days when hope rises out of hopelessness, and you are amazed by the power of God to transform night into day. Finally, I have learned in the midst of these days that in the end only love matters. When called upon to give a reason for the miracle of the birth of a baby, Son of Man and Son of God, on an ordinary night in Bethlehem in a stable rude, I can only offer these words—for God so loved the world!

              Advent and Christmas invite you and me to anticipate the holy in the midst of our ordinary lives. Indeed, the seasons declare, God is to be found in the ordinariness of our ordinary days. Let us seek Him there and share with great joy share the Christmas story of His love for all the world!jamie