Any number of descriptions could easily fit our world. The place we inhabit is messy. Read any newspaper, listen to any news broadcast, skim through any Facebook page, and there you'll have it. We are a mess. Our world is littered with people impacted by poverty, racism, brutality, utter disregard for whoever is not in the favored group, antisemitism, anti-lgbtq sentiments, anti-women disrespect, and so many others, too many to list.
And, yet, it is into this world that we invite the Christ child to come. We yearn for His appearing. We long for the story to be told and retold. We eagerly await the story through the eyes of our children and grandchildren. We yearn with hopefulness for our own engagement with the story from Bethlehem, the angels, the shepherds, the wise men, and the hope that His birth brings. We are touched by the music of the season.
Yet, our world still groans in its incompleteness. We have not yet become what we are intended to be. Our brokenness displays that groaning. What is not unbroken these days: individuals, families, churches, our understandings of ourselves. And yet, it was into a somewhat similar world that Jesus appeared. While the sacred text says that "in the fulness of time," or "at just the right time," or at a time of "pax romana," Jesus came. That world into which He appeared had its conflicts: Jews versus Samaritans, Jews versus Romans, Romans versus whatever other countries, rich versus the poor, even intra-theological groups within the Jewish population with their conflicts. Yet He came. As a child. In an unpretentious way. He lived for a while amongst us. We, His own people, did not recognize Him. Thankfully some of us did.
There is comfort in His coming. We long for peace. We long for wholeness. We long for struggle and strife to cease.
And there are those moments in which we stop, breathe, surrender, and out of that comes the wonder of the new creation. The beauty of the Christ child. The peace that only He can bring. That understanding the God came to us. God came to us in all of our brokenness. God did not come to us because we had our houses in order. No, God came to us even when our houses were in disarray. We are incomplete.
Still, God comes to us even as our houses are in disarray. Such is the way we live. Such is the way society unfolds. And, still God comes to us.
Our world's state of disarray, chaos, confusion, suffering, pain, distress, and all clearly display that the world groans for His appearing. Some day He will appear ultimately and we'll experience the new heaven and new earth.
Until then, we anticipate His coming in the Christ child, and that eases our pain and suffering, even if just momentarily. Within His coming is hope. Grace. Mercy. Love.
And we act accordingly. We offer hope, grace, mercy, love, a helping hand to the marginalized, the lonely, the left out, the kicked to the curb, those with whom we disagree theologically or politically, not because we within ourselves have the power to do so, but because it was into our brokenness and chaos that the Christ child came once, and then again, and then again, and He comes yet again.
Therein lies hope for the world and for all of us who live in it.
"Holy One of Israel, as we await the coming of the Christ child at this holy season, lead us out of our chaos, confusion, and mistreatment of our sisters and brothers. Lead us and guide us toward respect for all humanity for even as we differ, we are much the same. Come into our disordered world, lives, spaces and places. May your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We eagerly away once more the coming of the Christ child who will ease our suffering and sooth our prejudices and grace our lives so that we can offer grace to others. Amen."
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