thesoulpurposedotorg

Years ago, my daughter’s homeroom adopted a family in need for the Christmas season. The class received a list of needed things. They knew the children’s names and their dreams. Each class member chose one gift to bring this family. As each chose, the list of needs became shorter and shorter. There was one gift that was avoided by all. My daughter, being the warm-hearted yet practical girl that she is, bravely agreed to purchase this despised gift.
We trekked through that week’s snow storm to K-Mart to purchase a potty chair for two year old Julia. Now, my daughter was delighted to be so generous but she was not delighted with the prospect of climbing the three flights of stairs to her homeroom with this potty-chair for all to see. She tried to pawn it off on mother, but I would have none of it. As we drove to the school the following morning, my daughter pondered how to answer the taunts that she was sure would come here way. I suggested she tell the she had bought the item for the Christ Child. She just rolled her eyes.
Actually, I think I was right. God became that needy families little baby child two thousand years ago; a child just a weak, just as human, just as embarrassing as any child.

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God–that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” (I Cor. 1:25-30)

The mystery of Christmas, the greatest paradox of the Christian life to my way of thinking, is that God became our peer that we might become fully human. God meets us as peer that we might meet ourselves as God intended us to be: fully human, designed to incarnate the divine.

This is part of what I think it means to live this out: Don’t think of yourself as more than any other. Don’t take more than is yours. If you have more than you need, give your abundance to the one who has not because they are your peer. Don’t use your power, your strength, to overpower and abuse another. Are you depressed this season, “poor in spirit” as the beatitudes call it? Embrace your human weakness as a gift for in your weakness God will be known. Yours is the Kingdom of Heaven. Are you angry? Remember you are but dust just like whoever angers you. Be peer-ful even as your Creator became your peer that you might become righteous, whole, redeemed.

Perhaps you, like us lugged Christmas up from the crawl space again this year. We’re beginning to unpack it. We arrange and rearrange the figures and then when it’s over we will stow it all back among the cobwebs and dark spaces. Yet we hope through it all, though we seldom admit it and never speak of it in anything more than a hushed voice, that in the midst of it all, through what is familiar and what is known to us, we hope that we might be invaded by unknown wonder and mystery. By something or someone greater and more wonderful than anything we could possibly imagine or dream.

“for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

Then comes that moment when we are filled unexpectedly with great joy because in the very midst of all that is so blessedly familiar, there is a blessing greater still – Jesus Christ, God become a weak little child. A little child’s weakness that is greater than our greatest strength. This year I’m feeling especially weak. I need to hear this good news and remember that what seems weak to me, might just be a reminder of why there is a Christmas after all.