I had a miserable morning. Woke up tired, Patrick was gone, everything just seemed sad.
I missed my old friends. Missed my family. Felt like a failure at everything.
Once the kids got on the bus, I brought Scally home and just cried. I could have used one of Kachi's classic lines: I wish everything was nothing.
One of those days, you know?
My heart was a turtle flipped upside down, exposed and immobile and futile.
And I begged God for help, to come and turn it rightside up.
And He did a strange thing.
A simple and sort of silly thing.
He reminded me of that old Sunday school joke. Teacher asks: what's grey, climbs trees, and stores nuts for the winter? Student puts up hand, replies: I want to say squirrel, but I'm gonna say ... Jesus? (Because as every Sunday school kid knows, whatever the question, the answer is always Jesus.)
So if the answer is Jesus, I asked, where is He, in this miserable morning? And he gave me that mundane and practical answer: at the end of your arms.
So I put on my jacket and packed up Pascal and we bought some people lunch and gave some Christmas presents and along the way I discovered what I had forgotten:
In God's upsidedown kingdom, fullness isn't found by gathering more for myself, but in pouring out.
Like He poured His love out on us, by coming to us.
Like He poured out His rightful glory and took on flesh.
Like He poured out His might and took on the helplessness of infancy, of poverty.
And brought salvation living and breathing into the world.
Yes. Even now, with two thousand years of well-worn Christmases, that old miracle still holds. Giving does not make emptiness, but fullness.
Merry Christmas, friends.
Xo.
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