Do You Need to Be Silenced?
We have been told so many times that Christmas is God’s gift to us that I think we sometimes relax into a problematic complacency.
Christmas and the coming of the Christ Child absolutely is a free and unmerited gift to us—God gives Godself to us in the Incarnation with no strings attached.
But what we forget is that if we choose to participate in this process, we will be changed.
Advent is actually all about change.
The valleys are being lifted up and the hills are being made low.
Our entire internal landscape is being rearranged—or it should be, if we have not gotten too deaf and numb to God’s presence in our lives.
This time of year it’s easy to bounce between frantic, consumer-driven gaiety and frightened depression at the state of the world and its violence.
But somewhere in the middle of the swirling commotion is a still point, where the chaos that comes from God and not from the world can reach our hearts and gently, lovingly, slowly turn us inside out. Continue reading