On a walk this week, I finally stopped to take a photo of a bare tree decorated with huge red Christmas stars. I had admired them since the tree was decorated. As happens, our daily experiences are mashups of life, faith and culture.
I came across the biblical Elizabeth and Zechariah in my morning prayer and reading practice. They had prayed for a child for their entire marriage. Now they were old. They lived a good, satisfying, and holy life but had given up on their prayer for a child long ago. Book of Luke
Then I read a commentary:
“And when they least expect it, God shows up. The angel Gabriel is sent with the good news. God had heard their prayers. God had heard their prayers all along. And God was answering. Not only would they have a child, their child would be the forerunner of the Messiah!” Soo-Inn Tan, Director of Graceworks, Singapore
Over Tim Hortons coffee in a lime green mug and raising my eyes from the book, I look over at the colourful hanging Christmas cards in the window. I contemplate my own long time prayers.
These prayers seem old, unanswerable, too big and all-encompassing. But are they? In boldness I blurt out my main want: deliver! So is that not what Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, came for? Do we not celebrate again his coming this year even in a pandemic? Perhaps it is this very time of the deferred hope of the pandemic ending making the heart sick, that God will choose to answer our big, all-encompassing prayers. What is faith anyway if it is not a belief in a God who loves us and will not give us a stone when we ask for what we need?
As life came from God, life can be given back to God for not only safe-keeping but for flourishing; the languishing plant is returned to the gardener for care. I pray for this, a Red Star gift from the Giver of all life, a Christmas miracle in the family. What do we have to lose by looking with hope?
ShellseekerReflections 