Merry Christmas from Inwood.
Over the last year I’ve been struck with how challenging it can be to stay focused. I’ve been thankful for the daily walks and regular prayer time, but it seems that there is always something screaming for my attention. I pick up my phone and then wonder where twenty minutes have gone.
Several writers have noted how screens - the internet - are designed to be perpetually distracting and remove the barriers that protect our mind from overstimulation. The pandemic worsens our already addled brains, making deep thinking and rest challenging. It’s easy to become stressed with all the (mis)information available.
It could be that the stress is familiar and our responses are rational, even if the intensity has changed. Scripture tells of insurrection, war, and disease. And so, there is nothing new under the sun, the prophet tells us, but this also includes a place of hope. We remember the wonder of how God breaks into the world, an opening that reminds us of Emmanuel - that God is with us.
And so the birth of Jesus Christ offers a sustaining hope. In practice, communities who share this story find ways to recover and offer that grace, with whatever resources are available, even in places of great want and despair.
In spite of our limitations, we continue to gather, build, and send. The anticipation of Jesus Christ fosters space for the refugee, the stranger, the neighbor, and a joy in knowing a world that will be transformed. The child represents this renewal and hope even in places from Ukraine to Myanmar, to any place where desolation seems to be the rule.
On Christmas we remember that we know God through a body, not as an intellectual proposition or an argument from abstraction. God’s love arrives as a child whose dependence on others reveals we are also dependent on each other, in God’s vast creation. In this we cast our hope, a new life, a life that has arisen out of eternity to begin a life like our own. With the baby, we now can focus on what is ahead.