Devotional 12-11-20

 John 1:6-8, 19-28

Every 11 months all the projects, sorting, and removing that is done in our house completely stops.  Some of this has to do with the fact that time is often filled with other church functions and gift buying and wrapping, but most of it is that we find peace in the house.  We decorate and set up five trees of various sized all with ornaments and thousands of lights weaving in and out the branches.  The house smells like balsam, we make spiced ciders, and we forgo overhead lighting for desk lamps and the glow of all the greenery.  We create a cozy house.  We find peace in Advent.  We see this in the church too as our church is decorated even now with greens, a tree, and the advent wreath.  The advent season and the peace it can bring is not lost in our empty sanctuary.  But that is not reality.  Reality is COVID.  Reality is chaos and confusion in this life and most actually in this pandemic.  

We have made the nativity story into my house at Christmas: a clean, gleaming and shiny story with a young girl in blue and her husband standing by her side with a light shining over them.  Peace in darkness.  But then in the Advent lectionaries is COVID.  A crazy looking man that resembles more Black Beard than the depicted grace of Mary.  I have always loved the thought of John the Baptist, a wild outlier who was never the one.  I suppose as a preachers kid, then youth director, then ministers wife I’ve always related to the ‘I am not the one, but the one is coming later.’

I agree with and try to live into the messy of a faith in God. Not pretending to have it all together but to live in a desert, understanding that I’m called to be a strong example of a Christian, full of uncertainty but understanding I am not the one, but I need to point to the one.  I need to acknowledge that although I want to have a cozy house at Christmas that is often not what a faith in Christ looks like.  It often looks like late night phone call at 2am, helping someone know it’s OK.  It’s often the unplanned and unscheduled 3 hour conversation that occurred when dropping off a paper. It’s stopping just to be there when someone is crying.  It’s disorder and mayhem. It’s John the Baptist in his camel hair spending time with people in fine linens and gems.  It is the other 11 months of the year.

So have a little COVID in your faith life.  Be a little “messy,” but be an example of faith for others, pointing to Christ and pointing to the one in midst of the pandemic of your life.

Tobyn Wells