Confession

I was working in the comfort of my home, pecking away at the keyboard of my computer, with our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel snuggled tightly by my side  — but I was grumpy. The to-do list was long and monotonous: Return emails, draft newsletter, proof content for social media posts, choose images for said posts, review budget, and secure a January retreat space. 

I don’t like being tethered to a computer by the ties of administrative minutia.

I don’t want my days to slip away, leaving a legacy of checked boxes and tasks completed.

I’d rather be meeting with people and hearing their stories and catching glimpses of God’s power and presence, even in (or particularly in) the midst of  their doubts and struggles.

The irony is palpable.

As a significant part of my job, I have the great privilege of reminding people that God cares about all aspects of their work and wants to use it for his glory.

But that day, I was grumbly about a particular aspect of the work I’d been given to do — the mundane, transactional  tasks required to communicate the larger, eternal vision. Like a perfectly-timed punchline to an unanticipated joke, I caught a glimpse of the darkness of my own heart. I want to serve God and others. 

Yet I also want life on my own terms. 

It’s in the inky darkness that I’m aware of my deep, deep need for a savior.

During some seasons, darkness has taken the form of intense medical trauma, devastating relational brokenness, or perhaps most despairingly, grief of lost hope.

The darkness of discontent is less dramatic, yet perhaps more insidious. It creeps in slowly, infecting the bloodstream of imagination, quietly eroding the hope of the gospel. 

As I positioned the six–inch figurines in our nativity scene, I couldn’t help but wonder…

If the shepherds felt discontent as they spent their days chasing rogue sheep, protecting them from needless danger if only they would stay with the flock.

If the innkeeper felt discontent as he dealt with frustrated travelers and scrambled to make room and find provisions for those in his care.

If Mary and Joseph felt discontent as their starry-eyed dreams for marriage and plans for the future were flipped upside down and emptied out by a visit from an angel.

Yet, it was in the midst of their very ordinary lives and their everyday work that the Lord of the Universe chose to reveal himself. His immaculate disruption changed everything.

It still does.

What does it look like to allow the hope of the gospel, the babe born in Bethlehem, to take residency in my soul? To rewire my thinking? To take the mundane and discontent and all the “I don’t wants” and “I don’t likes” and “I’d rather bes” and transform them, as only the great alchemist can, into agents of hope?

Every email becomes an opportunity to bless and encourage and communicate gratitude.

Every social media post, a platform to grow imagination.

Every image chosen and newsletter created and sentence crafted becomes a way to love those who I’d likely never meet, yet who are on their own journey of discovery and redemption.

Every diaper changed and spreadsheet created and quick conversation over coffee.

Every single detail of our ordinary days is pregnant with possibility —

Hope for the hopeless,

Light in the darkness,

Our God with us,

 Emmanuel.

“The stories that begin at Christmas end with Jesus’s followers sent into the world to launch a new way of being human; a new kind of power; the divine power of self-giving love.” N.T. Wright