It’s Christmas, which can only mean one thing: stressful travel arrangements.
I watch the passengers crowd around the doors, pushing and jostling to get as close as possible so they can be first through.
There are harried mothers and tired children, relaxed students and grandparents overloaded with gifts.
Watching them, I think about you on your way to Nazareth.
You would only have been a teenager, and I wonder if you were scared, felt overlooked as the crowds closed in around you, head and shoulders above your young, pregnant frame. Caesar called this survey, and now the streets are filled with families returning home to register. I wonder if people wrestled and jostled their way to the front like they do here. How did you cope with the long journey towards the end of your pregnancy? Was your mind hurrying to get you there, and your body holding you back? I wonder how Joseph felt – did he long to get there and home as soon as possible?
And to arrive somewhere already teeming with people? Hotel rates through the roof, and cries of “fully booked” no matter how fast you rush around them. Did the innkeeper see the exhaustion on your face and take pity on you, leading you to the stable behind his house?
How did you cope with this?
How did you cope with a baby born to be a Saviour when few believed you?
How do I respond now, to you, to your son?
I’m really proud of my friends over at the Christian Aid Collective, as if you didn’t know. Check out their new short film, More Than Food, then head over to their website and sign up to join us.
“While the believers are expectantly looking to God, He is looking to Mary. While some hoped that the Messiah would overthrow the Romans, God planted a seed. Expecting God’s in-breaking in this world is a revolutionary waiting, a prayerful attentiveness and being at ease in risk.”
Real people living real lives. Real people struggling with real pain. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, classmates and friends. Struggling to the point of believing that they can’t do it anymore. To the point of believing that it’s too late for change or hope or healing.
It’s never too late.
Please stay alive.
We need you. Your story matters. It’s not over yet.
And there is no magic formula. It’s long nights and coffee, cigarettes and counsellors. It’s people to walk beside you, bring you coffee, sit in the darkness. It’s vulnerability when you can’t take another step. The road to recovery is not easy. But it is real. And worth it.
“Jubilee and Sabbath are a couple of the distinctive marks of God’s peculiar people. Not only do they know how to work, but they also know how to party (Jubilee)… and they know how to rest (Sabbath).”
[Shane Claiborne]
I planned to take photographs of Thanksgiving celebrations yesterday… but then I just got too caught up in cooking and enjoying long conversations with friends, so you’ll just have to trust me that it was excellent!
I really hope that we (I) learn to throw better parties, and take better care of ourselves.
I find myself torn when I think about these issues.
There’s a part of me that recognises we live in a media-saturated world where image and brand matters, and we owe it to Jesus to do everything we can to be the best, to strive for excellence in all we do.
There’s a part of me that depends on a salary from communications/ design daily for a living.
There’s a part of me that winces when the music is off-key and badly mixed.
There’s a part of me that knows design matters. Typography matters. Not using 10 different swirling and dissolving and sliding transitions in a slideshow matters.
And there’s a part of me that knows it doesn’t matter at all.
That Jesus never attended a brand strategy meeting.
There’s a part of me that remembers that Jesus was “nothing special to look at”, that very few people recognised him when he came to earth… and that that was his plan. (It wouldn’t have been my plan).
There’s a part of me that loves to hear kids making noise in the back of the service, knowing that they add to my experience of God and I to theres. That I see God in them.
There’s a part of me that loves it when everyone gets a chance to play, to bring their songs as an offering to God even if it’s not the most musically talented person.
I’ve been wrestling with this for a while now, and especially after one particular conversation with a friend I love and respect. Does everything we do (in churches, in Christian organisations) have to be “professional”? Are we losing something of Jesus in our search for professionalism? We are called to be distinctive, to strive for excellence – but to do it in a manner that honours God, reflects his values. What values are we reflecting in our quest for professionalism?
It seems to me that Jesus taught us that the way we do things matters as much as what we do.
“Art is about discontinuity and contradiction, which is how grace is experienced in the world, as an alien intrusion into a world that deceives us into believing that we are defined by what we do, not by what Christ has done. And so we are compelled to prove ourselves, to make something that justifies our existence. But art is not just doing and making, it is also receiving, and hearing. It is not just an achievement; it is a gift. It is devoting one’s life to something so futile, inefficient, and in many ways useless, that it becomes a means of grace. Cities, with their concentration of doers and achievers, full of those obsessed with going from good to great, can pose challenges to cultivating a passivity that is absolutely necessary for art.”
The delightful Civil Wars played in Glasgow on Friday night – and they did not disappoint. It amazes me how they can captivate a crowd with one guitar and two voices – rowdy in all the right places, pin-drop quiet in all the right places. Joy Williams voice does something divine for me…
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