Advent Advances

How is it that walking into the dark, 
we are really walking into the Light?

Our family continues to walk forward with Safe Families. The new year will eventually hold new kids in our home. Right now, we must get off our duffs and finish our paperwork, a Christmas gift for our Lord. We are no Magi. We have nothing sweet, nor expensive for the Babe, but we have space. We can make room for one more weary head in our home. So, we walk into the dark, following the Light.

The shepherds quaked this year. No jest. One hit the deck, and he wasn't decking the halls. Maybe the cold night got him, or maybe he was in the barn struggling with a bad head cold, but quaking shepherds are real. Sometimes they look a lot like us.

Last week, a quaking threatened. Chaos sought us. In our home, in our community, and in our tummies. Because when we walk into the dark carrying the Light, in spite of our brokenness, because of our brokenness, we face an enemy who wishes to push us back into our dark places and dark spaces. "Get back into your dingy dark hole." he says.

Our enemy knows that when we bravely step out of our darkness, when we look up, we are given a Flame. The Flame that illumines a pathway to God. Ironically, this Flame most often leads us right back into the darkness, theirs and ours. Yet now, we hold the Flame. We are lit by the Light. The Flame burns  within and throughout our night.

Last week, Flame, God, Manna met with us, and we trekked to First Lego League qualifiers, not to Seattle Children's. God met a real need. The Flame bid us, "take off your sandals and praise in this wilderness." Manna consumed, healed. While we quaked, sustenance arrived in a manger. We only needed to walk with the Light. This week? We're still working on our chaos. Darkness ever threatens, but we know: the Light overcomes.

 So, let us walk towards the Light, like the shepherds. 

And let us carry the Light within, like Mary.

God of the Manger and God of the Barn, God of Manna with ministering hands, Flame of Fire and Light of Mankind, consume our darkness. Bring your light into our world, into our quaking and into our breaking. Let us carry your light, until it streams into a broken world and makes whole the weary, wandering, and woeful. Us. 

Light of Mankind, never give up on us. Meet us at the manger. We come empty handed, but quaking we come. Fill us dear Shepherd, that in turn, we may feed your sheep and give them a place to lay their weary heads. This Advent, help us look for your light and your life. Surely, we will find you in a dark space filling a manger, Manna for mankind.

‘My people are so poor, that God can only appear to them in the form of a piece of bread.’ ~ Ghandi