Reorientation

REORIENTATION

Preparing my home and heart for Christmas this year has been particularly bittersweet. Every ornament unpacked: made-from-toilet-paper-tube angel, shimmering blue glass heart heralding “It’s a boy!”, and the bright pink Sugar Plum Fairy frozen mid-pirouette, marks a specific moment in time that has passed — yet somehow will live into eternity. What a mystery.

While sifting through the box of ornaments, I discovered a small “metal” helmet. Like Scrooge’s Ghost of Christmas Past, it transported me back to a Christmas morning well over a decade ago. My sleepy-eyed children had awoken to a sprawling Playmobil medieval castle, complete with battle axes, catapults, and a drawbridge that would protect its tiny plastic inhabitants from threat of invasion. Every minute detail, including faux leather quivers holding bendy brown arrows, was designed to defend. To protect. To minimize the threat of invasion. 

The scene that provided countless hours of imaginative play for my children reflects the story of the human condition, inherited from our siblings long ago in the garden. We were created for a world in which we are fully dependent on our Creator, living in shalom — a state of perfect peace and wholeness where all is truly well. But since the fateful bite of forbidden fruit, everything shifted. What was whole became fractured. We still experience the fallout, to some degree, every day and in every area of life.

Disappointment and disease.

Broken relationships.

Fear of what the upcoming year may hold.

Like children entranced by medieval knights engaged in battle, we too are easily consumed by our smaller stories — distracted from the larger narrative into which we have been written. The Truest story has a hero who left his royal throne, pierced the veil between heaven and earth, and entered the scene to save us. 

Unto us a child is born. 
In that moment, everything shifted.

Hope became flesh to bring sight to the blind and to bind up the broken-hearted. He came to free us from a thousand forms of captivity, including the deeply embedded desire to direct our own lives. We create our own shackles of perfection, idealism, regret, and bitterness. We defend our self-reliance. We construct and protect the narrative entitled What Life Should Be. 

We work hard to build small kingdoms of security or comfort. Instead of axes and catapults and arrows, we pick up more socially acceptable weapons to ensure we remain in control — like busyness, competence, or the many ways we numb our cosmic sadness or longings. We are easily consumed by the smaller stories in which we dwell. 

For my children, nothing broke the spell of make-believe play quite like the reality of grumbly tummies and the sweet smells of dinner drifting from the kitchen. Awareness of hunger reorients our desire.  

Out of his great love for us, our Father allows pain and longing and disruption to intervene. He is beckoning his children to awaken to, and live fully in, the reality of our rightful roles in his larger, truer story.

Pay attention to your hunger.

Lay down your weapons.

Follow the signposts leading to abundance and completeness and unshakeable, perfect peace.  

This is the hope of Christmas. 
Emmanuel, God is with us.