Welcome to Our World
It is the day after Christmas, and true to form, I'm at loose ends. This seems odd to me because it is such an unusual year, and so I did not expect the after-holiday loss of inspiration that happens in other years.
Yesterday my Facebook memories reminded me that three years ago, Mom spent her last Christmas at our home. She found it hard to keep up with the activities of a multigenerational group so I brought down photo books I'd made over the years and she poured through those while we surrounded her with food, games, and conversation. There was one pic in that Facebook memory that included me, so today I wore the same clothes I wore the day Mom was here.
I've missed her a lot this year. We would have talked through all the things, including the politics. There are days even now when I think briefly, "I should call Mom. It's been forever."
Our traditional Christmas Eve service was recorded this year and sent out by email. Families from church told the Christmas story together on Zoom, holding up the parts of the Nativity as they told each section of the story. Interspersed were songs offered by a mom and a daughter from our congregation.
Being a bit on the introvert side of things, I've been mostly ok with church online, but hearing Hope and Jyl sing Welcome to Our World by Chris Rice in our dining room, instead of in the darkened church, is still bringing tears to my eyes when I think about it. The congregation could not sing Silent Night in hushed harmony, or resound the Gloria chorus from Angels We Have Heard on High.
And it wasn't only the music I missed. Christmas Eve is when all the young people who have moved away come home to be hugged and welcomed back. It is the orange placed in my hand on the way out of the sanctuary. It is family after family taking Christmas pictures by the huge Christmas tree.
It is awe, once again, that Jesus would come, helpless as an infant, to a young girl in the Middle East. What a mystery, God walking among us turning everything upside down enough that we still so often miss the point.
But that last bit...the awe...is still here. Especially this year, there is awe that Jesus would see enough in us that he would come and live among us.
So I sit here next to my Advent candles and miniature Ecuadoran Nativities gifted to me by good friend, and wonder.
My tears at the music isn't only nostalgia, but also a sense of how hard the world has been. I can't think of this story as sweet or safe. There is too much hard mixed into all of it. Jesus did not come into safety or sweetness, but maybe to teach us what was more important than either of those things. I still have a lot to learn. I want to claim safety and sweetness as part of faith, but it isn't. Not a sparrow falls without God knowing it...but sparrows do still fall. The hairs on my head are numbered, as are the hairs on the heads of every person who has come upon one tragedy or another this year. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is the love of God for us, and that love is with us even as we go through the events of our lives...all of them. As much as I wish God's love meant I would always be safe, I cannot deny that Jesus made it plain that it does not. Jesus came because love was worth all of what he went through.
So I fight with that, as someone who has had the illusion that they can keep themselves safe through careful choices and good luck and God's favor. And I look to others for an example of what it means in our times. John Lewis is the name to comes to mind first.
The birth of Jesus is a story of love and justice and mercy being more important than safety. Where would we be without that?
Welcome to our world.
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