This Christmas might be offering us a more special gift than any of us ever expected or imagined: space and time to simply be.
This year — marked by incredible pain — stopped me in my tracks. Yours too, I imagine. It reminded me of my mortality over and over and over again, pounding that truth into my heart and head with every heart-shattering headline I read and every story I heard.
If it wasn’t clear before 2020, it is now: life is fragile.
And now — with many cities in lockdown, or in the least everyone being encouraged to stay home — we have an opportunity I’ve never have had in all the December’s in my lifetime. A forced gift to be.
It is only December 6, and I have watched more Christmas movies this year than ever before. (Most of them very corny, my favourite kind.) Each night before bed, I get on the floor of my apartment, kneeling beside my coffee table, where I light my Advent candles and pray. I’ve never done this before.
Perhaps this year, when premiers and governments are saying “Christmas is canceled” we all begin to understand — truly — what Christmas actually is. It feels a bit like the makings of a Hallmark Christmas movie — but maybe the meaning of Christmas will make itself so much clearer this year.
The welcoming of Jesus.
Space to make in our hearts.
A child.
A womb.
An uncovering, an unwrapping, a birth — after a long, hard year of pregnancy — to finally rejoice, to be, to dwell.
Maybe this year — with stores closing and events canceled — we’ll realize all along that those things (as much as I love and miss them very much) never made Christmas, and sometimes even had us missing it.
Maybe this year, God will become nearer and clearer to us than ever before.
Maybe this year, we will experience the coming of Emmanuel in a way we never have.
Maybe this year, we’ll take these cancellations and utter disappointments and turn them over in our hands, seeing a side of them we never saw before: a gift. To stop. To breathe. To be. To dwell. To encounter a God who often speaks in the quiet.
As our schedules and hearts slow down — though marked with grief and pain and joy — may we create space to dwell and bring all of these feelings before the throne of Jesus.
May God dwell in our homes this Christmas…
…but most importantly, may God dwell in us.