Have We Missed What Matters Most?

I wake.  Tip-toe down spiral staircase, after squinting to see…5:30 a.m.  The world’s asleep. It’s quiet.  Still. Serene...

Caught between the fog of another world and the reality that business constantly insists, I do.

The dark is pierced by Christmas lights.  Greeting me. Shining right through confusion.

Each light announcing the birth of so much more.

Coffee in hand, I peak out the window separating me from the world.  And what I see leaves me breathless…

Snow, snow has fallen like a Savior, that morning so many years ago.  Soft. Light. Pure. White….Perfect.

Covering the ugliness all around with a grace.  A stillness.  A silence, we have yet to experience in the hustle and bustle of it all.

But yet, if our world didn’t stop, I have to ask….would I be curling up with my journal and Bible, and the peace that promises?  Or would I too be caught in the rat race, chasing the “perfection” that we all seem to think is found in stores.

There was a man named Simeon.  A devout man, filled with the Holy Spirit. Promised He would not die, before seeing the Christ child.

Have you ever been made a promise, but then it seemed like a lifetime before you saw the reality of what you had hoped for?  Have you waited, and wanted, and wished for, and prayed for….an impression, a sense, a longing that you just know God placed somewhere deep within you?

Well, I can imagine this is how Simeon felt. A Christ-child? Where?  Where is the promise that He waited a lifetime for?  The one God and heaven had seemed to delay in depositing?

And yet, Simeon was ready.  The exact day and moment Jesus entered the temple….he was there, waiting for Him.  And Simeon didn’t delay in responding.  He took Jesus close to His heart, in a moment when heaven meets earth, as scripture had anticipated.  Simeon attesting,

“Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory to Your people Israel.”.  Luke 2:29-32

Simeon recognized The One others passed by.

He was not satisfied with temples empty of a Savior.  He did not rest, or fail, or let himself depart until He had pulled his salvation so close that He could literally feel him swaddled and pressed close to his heart.

And I want that kind of faith, trust, hope, anticipation….don’t you?  Resisting the urge to give up, let go, move on without seeing the fullness of a Savior who is Jesus, coming in a way that it seems we can touch him.  Waiting, staying in such close communion with God, I don’t settle for less….missing the promises of His Spirit.

And yet, we do miss Him.  We all do. Daily. We miss the stillness, the quiet morn that Jesus was born to fullness where our Savior now asks us to live….deep inside our hearts.

The snow falls, but still I see many now, tainting the fall of grace with business and cars.  And oh how we all justify our media frenzies, our shopping craziness, and our ADHD lifestyles because…truth is….we don’t want to live like a Simeon.

We want to do what we want to do instead.

So slowly, unknowingly, we fall out of the quiet, serene, waiting for a Savior.  We replace a stable, a manger, a perfect infant birth….with noise, the pollution of a world trying to rob us from the true meaning of Christmas.

Yet, today, I urge you.  Please, will you find Him?

Wait for Him.  Seek Him wherever He might be found for you.  Maybe it’s in a church building?  Maybe it’s in the woods, or by the water where nobody is?  Is it in your car, quietly alone driving where you commune with God most?  Or maybe it’s in His Word, face flat on the floor of your bedroom?

Wherever it is, will you find the Christ who is the Savior, Jesus?  Will stop right now, take a few minutes to humbly, honestly, earnestly seek Him? 

Where do you shrink at the glory of it all?  Where do you let the heavens fall like snow upon your heart…..until all you know, all you are, all you have experienced in covered by grace….

Soft. Light. Pure. White….Perfect.

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