Merry Christmas! it's great to have a few minutes to sit in the midst of a busy day.. do I spend it on research as I should? Of course not...!
We read the Christmas story this morning, and then a little commentary about it that talked about mess.
the shepherds, their sheepy smell, the manger, the fact that a more desirable lodging was nowhere to be found, Mary's pre-married state, strangers everywhere instead of anything familiar, a manger instead of a cradle, chaos and noise ... The reading talked about how much we wish the story was more like the front of a Christmas card and how little the images we often see actually resemble what the reality was...
Isn't that the truth!? We want our family's and our homes and everything around us to 'look right', and we're a little shy about folks seeing the mess underneath. We present a sanitized version... but God didn't, and it's pretty important that the story is just as it is.
As we prayed after reading the story, we prayed that we'd be more okay with mess.. that we wouldn't feel so ashamed or exposed when the stuff underneath shows through to the surface... that we could find ways to live more joyfully in the tension that is our neighborhood and our uncertainty about our own future. As Bren was praying, the idea of shalom meeting mess came into my mind as I imagined the scenes from the Christmas story.
God seems to work in the midst of mess, and trying to make things appear 'just right' is not only evidence of our desire to be our own God, it erects walls that we then need to maintain...
Maybe i should have tried to come up with some more fuzzy or nice thoughts to share on Christmas day.. but these are the 'messy' ones that showed up today!
We do wish you a merry, merry Christmas! Thanks for reading.
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