The newness, separateness -- and yet connectedness -- has never changed, and is completely independent of anything they have ever done or said. They have come from me and I am both lessened and increased because of their existence: each a splendidly distinct, miraculous gift.
These bonds are on my mind because I am missing them today and because God in His faithfulness and grace is using the silence to see the comparative meagerness of my efforts at love, and to draw me, helplessly, to ponder the Incarnation in a newer, deeper way.
"She [Mary] will bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His Name Immanuel (which means, God with us).'"
No wonder Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. For nine months as this child grew within her she must have daily wondered at the coming fulfillment of all the promises repeated through thousands of years of labored human existence under the heavy curse of sin. The promise, repeated by generation after generation, of the lifting of the sentence of thorns and pain and death and separation from God.
God with us.
It is the deepest longing, isn't it? Underneath the human successes, the family affections, all the spiritual endeavors, is the hunger of my soul that can only be satisfied in the presence of God. Further compounding the bleakness of my estate are the offenses that not only pile up obstacles in relationships, but ultimately bar all access to the source of life and change and growth.
And in that one birth the obstructions of sin were removed and He was with mankind.
God with us. With me.
He did the work.
He cleared the way by becoming the way.
Such LOVE:
To make me, pursue me, redeem me at the cost of hell itself, so that I could see Him, know Him, love Him, adore Him.
It is unfathomably, achingly splendid that God humbled Himself to take on the humanity of His own making in order to bring that wayward creation back to Himself!
But adoration has often been lost, for me, in the details of Christmas.
Oh, I have found it more blessed to give than to receive, and even stayed within a reasonable budget. I have incorporated Bible verses in my cards and preferred carols over winter merriment jingles. Christmas Eve, I maintain, is my favorite part of the season.
But ever-so-subtly, the homemade soup and bread, the candlelight, the dulcet tones, and the string of beautiful, beloved faces in the pew next to me have distracted my affection from the point of it all.
Not because family, food and candlelight are bad things -- human love is surely the greatest earthly gift God has given -- but because my heart is prone to wander from the very thing it needs for life. God with us. With me.
Such Love: to seek me, save me, and patiently draw me back ...to wonder and adore.
Why lies He in such mean estate,
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christians, fear, for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.
Nails, spear shall pierce Him through,
The cross be borne for me, for you.
Hail, hail the Word made flesh,
The babe, the son of Mary.
