Waiting for God Knows What
L O V E is here
We are at the threshold of Christmas, when at the darkest time of the year we welcome light that filled the sky with angels singing, when a star shone so brightly it lit a path to a lowly barn. Inside that space a laboring mother gave birth in the dark to her son. He was given a most common Hebrew name, Joshua, and the name means, “God rescues, or saves.” We know him as Jesus.
Advent is the season when we remember that divine love put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. Jesus being born in a barn tells us that God shows up in the most forsaken corners of the earth. He brings with him, in his person, the final Advent gift: Love.
For Jesus, love was muscular. It was an encompassing, energetic love that radiated from him with powerful tenderness for the weak and the hopeless. He noticed everyone around him, and he made time for those without status: women, children, the infirm. He spoke truth to the powerful and gave mercy to anyone who asked for it. Jesus’s love reflexes were honed and strong because he risked, over and over again, getting close enough to others to feel their pain and offer acceptance and hope.
We, too, have muscle memory for love. If we’ve been loved well, our reflexes are trusting and at ease with others. If we’ve been forsaken, our love can be constricted, fearful of being hurt again, skeptical of contentment. We hold back, relying on the false fruit that self-protection will keep us safe.
But the promise of Christmas is on our side. The love that Jesus brings is redemptive. It heals the pain from other loves gone wrong and restores us to our essential selves. We are made for connection and relationship, with a muscular love that has practiced caring for others in a healthy way so often it becomes an automatic reflex. Christmas reminds us that we can always start again on the path of love, because Jesus himself will be our companion.
This is Living Now
Our waiting has not been in vain, for just as was promised, Jesus broke through space and time with the gift of himself. He endured the entire human experience in order to bring you the gift of your full self, filled to overflowing with hope, peace, joy, and true love. Let heaven and nature sing.
“Little by little you begin to feel that you’ve stepped into a shape that was waiting there all along. And that is love.” -Anne Lamott