Embracing Connection and Presence This Christmas Season

Listen to your life see it for the fathomless mystery that it is in the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness touch taste smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is Grace. [00:13:51]

I think part of the message of uh Incarnation is that if God could be present in a Manger or in a carpenter shop or in that body of a Jewish rabbi there is there's no moment in time and no place in space where he cannot be present and um so he wants us all to be included in that. [00:14:16]

It made me think about how uh probably none of our families look quite as good in actual life as they do on the Christmas cards similarly to our lives don't look quite as good in real life as they do in social media and so and how glad and grateful I am that the characters in The Bible are very ordinary and flawed people and yet God can use them. [00:15:24]

Nobody uh who has left anything for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will not receive even in this life a hundred times over um homes brother sister mother children and um we experiened that partly just together and I think about um Linda getting that text from you about what it's like as you have suffered loss this year and felt orphaned in some ways. [00:18:00]

I was thinking if Jesus sent on a Christmas card who would be in his picture and you know he tells us uh I was in prison and and I was sick and you visited me and I was hungry and I was thirsty um the least of these um so we all get to be in that Christmas card and that day is coming and that's part of what Christmas is about. [00:18:52]

I think as you get older it's a little easier sometimes um you can just uh experience that peace and joy for 3 seconds or two minutes like that's good enough and that builds a little place in your heart where just you and God live and that place can be returned to a lot during the season. [00:19:47]

I think Christmas is one of those times where uh it can be the most joyful time of the year and it can be the most painful time of the year and sometimes the pain is deeper because we wanted to be Joy or we're surprised by pain and there'll be moments for me when I will have a memory or I will look at a picture and it will just trigger um sadness that catches me by surprise. [00:39:36]

The Wonder of that idea of incarnation is Jesus isn't just present in the moments where all is calm and all is bright and uh it's the most wonderful time of the year uh he is as deeply present in the painful times and the hard times and in some ways um uh his presence there might be even more deep. [00:40:03]

There's a way that we meet each other in places of suffering and difficulty and pain and uh doubt and fear there's a way that we meet each other there and can love each other there and help each other there and form a connection and a bond um that for some reason I don't fully understand runs deeper than when everything is happy and good. [00:40:31]

If you're going through something it's difficult or deep or dark the the Comfort I would offer is not that it's going to end because it might not but uh if you stay there you will find Jesus there he will be there. [00:41:51]

I think for me a big part of the journey over the last several years has been um life just one day at a time and don't plan anything too far ahead or hold on to anything too tightly just hold it real Loosely and this day this day Mana for this day and that's you know become news very much that way and that's been really helpful to me. [00:29:13]

I was talking to my friend Kent about this a couple days ago that um I'll have this picture in my mind of um very consistent rhythms from one week to the next but Tim as you know um often the kind of stuff that we're doing with become new well involved like going down to San Jose to do a seminar down there and going to Oklahoma to be doing stuff there. [00:27:41]