Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Locating Ourselves in the Advent Christmas Epiphany Story

Before we leave the Christmas and Epiphany narratives, let us take one last look back and see where we are in these stories:

If you are older, and wondering if you've devoted your whole life to a promise that was an elaborate hoax --

If the thudding of your heart wakes you up at night so that you can ponder how all your good plans came to ash and ruin--

If you are part of a highly trained professional elite who sees something new and unexpected in the cold cosmos--

If you feel like a wanderer in a land that has no scent of home--

If you are overtaken by mysteries that you only partly understand--

If you feel old and all used up--

If you are part of an unappreciated part of society, caring for flocks of sheep or students or spreadsheets or patients or products to be sold--

If you feel desperate to keep hold of the small scraps of power that you have--

If you have lost everything--

If you read these stories and feel distant from them--

Know that the Good News comes for us all.  

Some of us will hear it in the form of angel choirs singing so loudly that we can't ignore it.

Some of us will perceive it in a speck of light beamed from a great distance.

Some of us will perceive it in the ways our lives are upended.

Some of us will have to wait a bit longer for the full revelation while at the same time being present to the mysteries.

But know that the inbreaking Kingdom of God is both here now and not quite here yet.  Look ahead to the Baptism of our Lord and the words of God who is pleased with Jesus at the start of his ministry, before he's done anything much at all.


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