It must have felt like hours, as she raged inside her tiny prison, the walls standing resolute against her screams, the door refusing to yield under a torrent of blows. The crawlspace at the base of her bed's headboard had seemed like a great place to hide, just the right size for a young girl to squeeze inside and escape detection. In the dark, however, as the minutes trickled by and no one came to find her, she had quickly changed her mind. When the door wouldn't budge, her uneasiness exploded into panic as she beat and kicked and roared against the darkness that confined her.
By the time my parents finally heard my sister's cries, they found a tear-stained, snotty mess with bloodied knuckles, who would carry the emotional scars of that ordeal the rest of her life.
There are, of course, a thousand beautiful pictures wrapped up in the Incarnation -- that God comes to his broken people, like a father stooping into the mud to scoop up a wounded child, for example -- but for me, the picture that really gives life to this season is tied to that memory of my sister.
Have you ever stopped to think how impossible it all seems? The great God of all the universe -- simultaneously present at all times and in all places, the foundation of all being, the source from which the whole material universe was derived -- squeezed, a raging torrent of life and power, within the confines of an infant's weak and helpless body? The immaterial and the material, Spirit and flesh, God and, yet, a little baby -- is there any greater contrast? Could any chasm seem more unbridgeable?
We always tend to think of the birth of Jesus as a peaceful, happy occasion, but there is violence there as well. A member of the trinity who had existed with the others in perfect harmony and self-fulfillment is stripped of this perfect existence and introduced to hunger and fear. He is wrenched away from those who know and love him perfectly and put in dependence on those who can never understand Him. In fact, later, we will find this Jesus, as a grown man, doubled over in a garden, agonizing under the burden of his mission as he weeps and sweats blood, pleading with his own alienated Deity for release.
Far more than the serenity of star light and wise men, far more than the sweet and smoky aromas of frankincense and myrrh, it is that image -- the image of Jesus struggling, just like my sister, within the bonds of his humanity -- to which I most relate.
Don't you?
How often do your hopes of what life could be -- of loving your spouses or children well, of being generous and kind and honorable, of using your time and your resources to be gracious and generous to others -- get trapped in the struggle what life actually is? How often does stress consume your gentleness? How often does obligation ensnare your generosity? How often does the daily agenda cripple your ability to love?
Aren't we all constantly at war against our claustrophobic lives?
Yet, here in this advent season, as we prepare our hearts to celebrate the Baby in the manger, we are met with the greatest truth of all:
He knows.
He knows what it means to hunger and to be tired and to go wanting. He knows what it means to ache for more in our relationships, to struggle under the demands of others. He knows the tyranny of time and expectation. He knows how stress and fear and obligation bind us and hold us back from our grand intentions.
He knows.
And we are not alone.
