Continuing to tap the archives for previous Advent posts. Today's post is from Christmas 2010. I wrote this just months after experiencing a traumatic bike accident. However, I was feeling more than just physical brokenness. I was also struggling emotionally and relationally. Reflection on the past can limit us, but today it causes my heart to rejoice. I didn't know it was coming, but I experienced just the healing of which I speak through the end of some relationships and the advent of new ones.
The Messiah entered a cold, dark, and unwelcoming world through the vulnerable, brutal, and harrowing experience of physical birth. Was that what the prophets foretold? Was he the answer to their prayers? Weren’t they anticipating a triumphant and charismatic leader; a revolutionary who would vindicate and free them in a dramatically powerful fashion? Did his arrival cause them to question Yahweh? Did they have grave doubts whether this was the Messiah for whom they had long awaited?
What are we awaiting with equally great eagerness? For what do we hope and long? What are our expectations and desires? Love… healing… joy… comfort… peace… money… pleasure… ease. And yet, we are equally disconcerted when our most primal needs are met through trauma; pain; abrupt change; the unexpected. God frequently delivers that which heals, restores, provides life, and transforms through pain and brokenness rather than through more pleasurable experiences. Does this cause us to question His goodness; doubt His love; struggle with His version of justice? Perhaps. But such experiences also enable us to intimately know that it is in dying that we are truly restored to life…and that it is in being broken that we are healed.
The Messiah laid down his life both in the manner of his coming to earth and in leaving it. He so desired relationship with us that he placed himself in the most vulnerable of positions in order to seek us and find us and restore us to right relationship with the Father. He modeled the self-giving, sacrificial love that He expects us to bring to the world. Just as many anticipated His arrival…let us love in a way that causes the brokenhearted to know He is coming again.
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