Advent Thoughts, #1
When reading the nativity accounts, many thoughts strike one. Most of them are not magical, mystical kind. although I am guilty of it, too, and right now, we humans are not content to leave well enough alone and just read the story for what it is. We embellish it with motives and subtexts and "character insights" that are more imagination than history.
However, I noticed this time how many journeys are in the nativity story. People are moving all the time. Mary to see Elizabeth; Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem; the magi to Bethlehem from who knows where. The shepherds travel. Mary and Joseph flee to the Egypt and back.
Journeys aren't just movement of ground under your feet. And those journeys were of indeterminate length, unlike ours today when we expect to get somewhere in a specific amount of time. Yesterday I left Duncan, South Carolina, at 2:25 and wanted to be seated in a church auditorium in Chattanooga, TN, at 6:30 for a Christmas concert. That meant no stopping and going at least 70 miles per hour, barring traffic in Atlanta. I made it. No such traveling for our Biblical friends--they set out on journeys with vague ideas of how long it would take, measuring in days rather than minutes. No such thing as cutting it close. You arrived when you arrived.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if we saw our life's journeys that way, of indeterminate length and dependent on God's mercies.
However, I noticed this time how many journeys are in the nativity story. People are moving all the time. Mary to see Elizabeth; Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem; the magi to Bethlehem from who knows where. The shepherds travel. Mary and Joseph flee to the Egypt and back.
Journeys aren't just movement of ground under your feet. And those journeys were of indeterminate length, unlike ours today when we expect to get somewhere in a specific amount of time. Yesterday I left Duncan, South Carolina, at 2:25 and wanted to be seated in a church auditorium in Chattanooga, TN, at 6:30 for a Christmas concert. That meant no stopping and going at least 70 miles per hour, barring traffic in Atlanta. I made it. No such traveling for our Biblical friends--they set out on journeys with vague ideas of how long it would take, measuring in days rather than minutes. No such thing as cutting it close. You arrived when you arrived.
Wouldn't it be refreshing if we saw our life's journeys that way, of indeterminate length and dependent on God's mercies.
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