The Farmer and I are out somewhere on an wide-open highway in the early days of Advent when I catch the phrase sprawled across a billboard:
The holidays always
find a way. *
But what sticks with me long after the billboard blurs by is the reality that:
The holy days always
find a way,
because they are about The Way Himself finding a way to actually be with us.
This is not poetic cliche.
This is cosmic reality.
Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
This is what I keep thinking about for days:
The holy days always find a way, to do more than find some way to just get through, or just get by, or somehow just get that gift under the tree, or just get us back in touch with the people and relationships and memories and all that ultimately matters.
The holidays always find a way…
only because they’re about God finding a way to be with us, and life in His presence is our actual way of being whole.
The relief of the holidays is:
You don’t even have to come, all you faithless and tearful and hopeless, because He finds the Way to come to you. If you’re weary of the way things never seem to change, if you’re tired of trying to make your way through, Christmas is for you, because The Way comes to you.
You don’t even have to come, all you faithless and tearful and hopeless, because He finds the Way to come to you. If you’re weary of the way things never seem to change, if you’re tired of trying to make your way through, Christmas is for you, because The Way comes to you.
God Himself sets aside the glory of heaven to get inside the grit of humanity, left the status of heaven to be with all of us hurting — and ultimately the Spirit of Christmas is about leaving everything privileged, to be with everyone pining for hope.
Like the Christ Child did for us.
Every year during the holidays: Some have faith in the mind-blowing impossible, that God of the universe came as a little baby …
While others will have faith in the the mind-blowing impossible, that the whole of the universe came from a Big Bang….
Everyone gets to choose what they will have faith in, but only one kind of faith chooses to believe the mind-blowing impossible that blows the door of the heart wide-open with an explosion of Love, that God Himself is now with us.
We all get to choose our own mind-blowing faith… because we all, without exception, have faith of one kind or other —- but only one kind of faith turns toward His very real arms reaching to hold us, to be with us.
That’s the gift of the holy days —- the holy days always find a way …. a way for us to find we are in the only place that matters, the place where we get to feel the Withness and Witness of God.
And wholeness in our souls is about deeply and genuinely feeling the very Withness of God — not just merely, cerebrally, knowing about it.
Some have faith in the mind-blowing impossible, that God of the universe came as a little baby …Others have faith in the the mind-blowing impossible, that the whole of the universe came from a Big Bang…. But only one kind of faith chooses to believe the mind-blowing impossible that blows the door of the heart wide-open with an explosion of Love, that God Himself is now with us.
I keep returning to this, when I feel the flooding rush of angst about lists that keep endlessly morphing and mushrooming and mountaining — and I pause in the moment and ask my soul:
Do you actually feel how Emmanuel, the God who is with you, is firm, solid love under you, never going anywhere?
Do you actually feel how Emmanuel, God who is with you, is steeled certainty at your back, always holding you, all your sureness, all your strength, all your spine and courage?
Do you actually feel how Emmanuel, God who is with you, is muscled safe arms right under yours, Love enfolding around you, shielding you, upholding you, carrying you like swaddled hope next to the assuring, steadying beat of His heart?
Christmas proves the point:
Emmanuel, the God who is with us, doesn’t stay some lofty idea in the upper echelons of philosophy, a notion in our noggin, but Emmanuel, God who is with us, takes on a body, comes embodied, feels what it’s like to be one of us, so we can feel in our bodies the safe relief of Him being here, right here, with us, being our way for us.
The carols play, the candle light flickers around nativities… and, in the midst of everything, we pause to sit with our souls:
Is my experience of the withness of God merely a knot of knowing stuck in a rut at the back of my head — or do I feel the sureness of His withness, the breadth and expanse of His presence enveloping all of me in this moment, spreading right across the whole of me, fully feeling the safe sureness of His withness under me and around me and in me?
We don’t fully, literally know the Withness of God in our life —— until we fully feel the Withness of God literally in our body.
Because the reality that can’t be missed is the fact that: Within our body is where our trauma lives, where our fears live, where our thoughts live, where our angst lives. If we don’t feel the withness of God actually literally within us… we actually aren’t experiencing the transformative power of what it means that God is with us.
Because it’s His withness that changes our whole life experience.
“In the thin air of Advent, you may not even know how to say it out loud: “I thought life would be easier than this.”
And the presence of your God comes near and gives the gift of His very sure promise: I will provide the way.
You may not even know who to tell: “I thought it would all be different than this.”
And the presence of your God draws close gives the gift of His very real comfort: I will provide grace for the gaps.
You may not even know how to find words for it: “I thought I would be . . . more.”
And the presence of your God reaches out and holds you close in His embrace and whispers: I will provide Me.
God gives God. That is the gift God always ultimately gives.
Because nothing is greater and we have no greater need, God gives God.
God gives God, and we only need to slow long enough to unwrap the greatest Gift with our time: time in His Word, time in His presence, time at His feet…. Time with Him.”
– excerpt from the 25 Day Christmas Devotional, The Greatest Gift
The holy days always
find a way —-
to simply feel the gift of His presence.
The Wonder of The Greatest Gift
Back on a farm, far from wide-open highways, The Farmer and I prepare to light the candles for Advent, as we sit close by the fire, and the snow starts to fall.
And it kindles within…
Christmas isn’t just a warm feeling within us…
Christmas is about feeling within us — how God Himself is with us.
And the flame blows lower and our love burns higher.
especially when things are kinda messy, experience a Christmas that restores Hope again That God Himself Is Truly With You
This Advent, just as things are, Stay in the Story,
the Story the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
(pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
