Advent has come

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Our pastor has been preaching a series called a slow walk to the manger. The walk is almost over, but one travels on with the manger and cross as the basic truth. God is with us, and He was with us in human form 2000 years ago, living in a way that no one could say He didn't understand human life and frailty and temptation and suffering.

Let us remember He was poor. Poor, people. Not just lacking some money or a few comforts, but poor and the owner of nothing. Before His ministry He worked as a stonemason or perhaps a craftsman (technon), physical work. It is beyond our imagining how He lived. How He died. Let's stop acting like we have it figured out.

Marvel this Christmas. Marveling puts us in a state without ground beneath us, a state where what we think is the foothold of reality is seen anew. And yet we can stand on it, sit on it, lie on it, kneel on it.

We cut the cable, so I'm not the least tempted to watch some phony Christmas miracle program on Hallmark. I can rest in the marvelous.

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