I was looking around for something. It was dark. I grasped the floor trying to find some unseen object. I couldn’t remember what I was looking for, but I knew it was on the floor, not far away. If I could only pick it up! I was crying. “Where are you?” I wondered.
Then I brushed up against something, the finger of God. I tried to grasp it but went in the wrong direction by mistake and lost my sense of where it was again. But now my heart was beating with hope. The tears stopped flowing, just a riverbed of dry tears streaming down my face, now.
“Where are you, God?” I called out. Hope filled my heart. He was just here. I spent the rest of the morning on my hands and knees, groping at the floor, seeking the hand of Jesus. I know He’s close!
It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them.
Ancient Text
Sunrise came and I hadn’t touched the hand of God again, yet hope buoyed my heart.
I had enough strength for the day, enough love to pour out on my children, enough forgiveness for the ones whose lives bumped against mine, their prickles and mine poking each other. Joy, tantalizingly close, but not grasped and put into my heart, lifted my spirits.
The hints of the divine are left for us, like the odd jewel on a stone path, covered in dust and scratched up, half hiding in the path, from the boots of so many who have trampled it. Will we notice it, wonder at the gleam of . . . is that a tinge of purple? Will we pick it up, polish it off, put it in our pocket to wonder at later?
If we do, the weight and purity of this jewel will begin to eat away at our pockets, at every impure thing it touches. It demands to be held up and admired. If we fail to do this, it burns away at the fabric of our pockets and drops back to the ground, awaiting the next traveller.
Do we give the divine the attention and the focus it demands? Or have we lost yet another opportunity, the hint of holiness falling back to earth – gone from our hearts?
“I think I found a jewel once,” we tell each other, but that seems so long ago, another lifetime ago. We inspect our pockets and they are singed where the jewel was, where we think we put it. Could it be?
“No. It must be a coincidence,” we think.
We will wait for another clue.
So we travel the dusty path of life, stepping on jewel after dusty jewel. Our hearts have grown harder and so our eyes have lost the spark of wonder that makes them truly able to see that which is not there, yet. The potential of a hidden jewel, on the ground, trampled, is not what we are looking for anymore. We have become blind.
And it is Christmas that awakens our hearts a little if we let it.
Christmas is the alarm clock in our hearts that rings and . . . will we answer the call, or press snooze, again?
Will we get out of bed, warm feet on cold floor, groggily seeking a coffee, and God?
Will we hope once more, that in the dark, early mornings of this advent season, as we cry out to God, the one we have forgotten, tears streaming our faces, we can find a glimmer of hope that we WILL see the shadow across His face, the brush of His finger, emanating so much love from His pinky finger that our entire hearts are strengthened for a week?
Will we find a glimmer of light, like a light switched on and then off again so that we wonder if there was even a light? Will this light give an unction to our souls to seek again, to get up early again, to look closely at the jewels in life that we almost trampled again?
Will we find the path that leads us to the heart of God, this season?
May your heart be soft friend, so that the seed of God will find a healthy place to grow. And may the tree that grows from within your heart produce fruit that nourishes your deepest longings, the ones you forgot you even had, so often had you pushed them back down to the depths of the soul, under distraction.
And may the life within the little town of Bethlehem be born in your heart this season, friend.
Restoring Life 