This week, people. We are here.
Christmas, in 3 days. OMGeee (not lost on me autocorrect that you wanted to change that to Omega). But yeah, yeah, yeah, presents, stocking, roast (in our case lamb shanks. or bacon wrapped tenderloin can't decide), lounging...you can have all that (but not my apple pie). I'm talking about the Incarnation.
Where heaven meets freaking earth.
All the little things we've done these past few weeks have brought us to this moment. No, the preparations haven't been perfect and my soul needs a
I think I might cry.
I'm tearing up not because of the grandeur of it all, but rather the simplicity. The quiet, humble, unassuming way the Creator of us all enters our brokenness - and does so in the form of a helpless (albeit squishy I'm sure) babe.
I had the chance to spend a few weeks in Europe in 2005 for World Youth Day. While in Sienna a few of us visited a Eucharistic Miracle - a miracle where (like 300 years ago) some people stole the host (that would be the bread in which we, as Catholics, believe is transformed into the Body Blood Soul and Divinity of Jesus during the Mass) and it was found after 3 days. However, to this day, the bread has not decomposed but rather it is kept preserved in a little chapel - a chapel that has been visited by popes and paupers.
What struck me most about this miracle wasn't so much that Jesus did a miracle - those happen all the time. Rather I was fixated on the fact that he chose to house himself, this miraculous moment frozen in time, in the most humble, common, and oh so brown little churches in all of Sienna. If you had no clue He was in there you would've passed by that place without so much as a second glance. Nothing struck it as fancy or kingly. You almost had to seek it out for it to be found.
Wow. Isn't that just like our Lord???
Seeking, calling, whispering (well, sometimes shouting at me) for us to draw closer. To come near that we may experience the gift and the peace found in His simple, humble way. Sometimes His way looks brown or dusty or it's covered in hay but man is it still beautiful.
OK, I'm all over the place now but maybe that's because this time of the year, this moment when we remember and partake in like the holiest of times, can't really be put into words. It is an encounter. A glance upon the wee one in the manger and a response that comes in the form of dropping to one's knee in awe and wonder. Spew spew spew, see I can't even describe it right. But maybe that's the point. Christmas isn't just a time for describing and retelling - it's a time for us to live in the moment and let our hearts be changed (over and over and over again).
So I guess that means I need to stop talking. How about this: I will shut up and then we'll all go off and hide away (at least in our souls) and we will embrace this little one, our King, and ask Him to enter our hearts just like he entered that stable and dwell in there and change us. There, much better.
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