Advent, Day 12: the good tension

There’s a really difficult tension in being human that we always carry with us– the tension of grieving with those who grieve and rejoicing with those who celebrate– it may be our greatest tension, but it’s also what makes us most beautiful.

I can laugh hysterically while my boys wrestle each other on the living room floor, and offer up a prayer for the friend who miscarried, for the mama whose little ones are not well enough to play.

We hold everything in balance– like the balance of this season of Advent.

It is our almost, but not yet.

It is the way we experience the Kingdom as best we can, in the waiting, but in the knowing that the presence of Christ lingers in and around us.

Let’s not be afraid to be both– to joyfully watch Christmas lights gleam and also mourn for loved ones far from home, widows and orphans who feel alone this year.

God’s love in Jesus’ humanity stretched Him both ways– to laugh and cry, to feel those emotions fully, in every space He inhabited.

May we live in Emmanuel’s shadow, learning from Him how to cherish our own experiences

and our every experience with each other.

There, community enters into the Kingdom a little closer, and as we gather to the real-life warmth of Jesus, we find that Advent becomes more and more about cherishing each other.

Amen.