Christmas Post #3

Life is full of things I don't understand. In my life what I should do at a given moment is so often unclear; consequences are muddy, choices ambiguous. I long for God to simply slip me a note in homeroom and give me some of the answers I desperately crave.

But he doesn't. He won't just lay things out. It seems like it's not in his character to reveal too much. There are no neat, and tidy spreadsheets bearing a heavenly font (End Times New Roman? Eternal Garamond? Curlz?) that lay out my life in nice compartmentalized, easy to read boxes. And yet, even though I don't always take advantage of it, there are glimpses that there's something about this mysterious God who reveals things so slowly and complexly that, in the end, it captivates me more and draws me even closer to his heart.

I think that's the way God intends me to follow. He only shines enough light to illuminate the next half step because he craves that intimacy with me too. He desires my company, my attention, my love. If I had all the answers, if I always knew what was next or could divine every hazy signpost on my own then I might just run along by myself, confident in my own ability to navigate the path ahead.

I was thinking about all this in light of Christmas (In the shower of all places actually. Do any of you have that? Maybe it's because that's when I'm most vulnerable.) That part of the reason God chose to bring hope and grace to the world by becoming a helpless baby human was not just to work out some master spreadsheet of salvation, some dry equation for canceling sin but because he longed for intimacy with the world. With you. With me.

There are few things more intimate than birth. It's messy, physical, and extremely personal. Part of me wonders if he chose the way he chose because he simply wanted to be with us, speak to us, flesh to flesh, to literally walk with us for a time. And then to lay down that personal, real, human life because he desired to us to know just how close divinity was willing to draw near.

This is a short scene from a play by Ron Reed the artistic director at Pacific Theatre. I love the images it creates, especially the picture of Christ's excitement and longing to be born. I imagine him trembling with anticipation and joy, excited to enter time and the limitations of space and to draw so near to the creation he'd watched grow since it began.


DREAM I: CONCEPTION
by Ron Reed
(from the play "Dreams Of Kings & Carpenters")

[Darkness. Voices come from various points around the
stage.]

ALL (staggered) God spoke.

1 My own true love.

2 My chosen.

3 My handmaid

4 has silence in her soul, untrammeled love.

3 A time to be born.

1 Sudden dive by dream into reality.

4 I felt

2 soft inward flutterings,

4 the Life

1 trembling through.

ALL (staggered) Love blooms,

1 bright

2 and wild.

4 Veiled in flesh,

3 Jesus begs to be born,

4 yields Himself to lie in prison,

1 in thee;

2 Yea thou art now thy Maker's maker,
and thy Father's mother;

1 Thou hast light in dark,

2 and shuttest in little room

ALL (except 3) Immensity

2 cloistered in thy dear womb.

ALL (except 3) He comes