Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you’ve delivered, will soon deliver you
Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God
Mary did you know?
The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak, the praises of the lamb
Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect lamb?
That sleeping child you’re holding is the great I am
Mary did you know?
(Songwriters: Buddy Greene / Mark Lowry
© Warner/Chappell Music)
The God of Paradoxes meets us at the Cross-roads of Advent. From outward appearances, the conditions of the First Advent fell a little short of ideal. Peace was the last thing on the minds of the populace. After all, Israel had languished for over 400 years without a prophetic voice of peace. They simmered angrily under the boot of a foreign colonizer, and there was no peace in sight. Because they had to bow to the colonizers’ command that a census be taken, a pregnant teenager and her pledged husband had to embark on a risky trip back to their home town, ironically named House of Bread. Can you ever go home again? When they got there, the tear gas was missing, but there was no welcome and no room at the inn. A stable? Really? Cows and sheep? A feeding trough? A newborn baby wrapped in grave clothes? Peace?
It was not the first time the God of Paradoxes had shone fiercely into the Abyss. In the time before time was, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God brooded over the waters. Order arose out of Chaos, for the Creator was at work.
In the fullness of time, the God of Paradoxes surprised a virgin and she asked, “How will this be?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:34, 35, NIV). Order arose out of Chaos, for the Redeemer was at work.
In the passage of time, we have come to December 2018. Things have been so frightening and uncertain that it has been expedient to become a citizen, rather than an “immigrant in Meschech,” one subject to ejection from the green pastures. Decades of feeling disjointed should have dissolved into happily ever after. Instead there are tears, mistrust, and mayhem. In place of peace, there is “a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on” (Galatians 5:19-21, The Message). Zoom out to the global, zoom in to the personal; insert your own version of brokenness and feel the wounded places that refuse to heal. Peace?
In the midst of our migration, “among Kedar’s tents,” the God of Paradoxes accosts hearts looking for sanctuary. But the Spirit does not just hover. This Comforter is not soft or light or bursting with the loft of avian feathers. In times like these, the Comforter appears as a weighted blanket. Such blankets operate on the principle of Deep Touch Pressure. Gentle, distributed weight on the body may promote and improve sleep, calm the nervous system, enhance focus, combat sensory overload, reduce anxiety, and make transitions easier.
So now the Spirit says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:18). If you have “lived far too long with people who hate peace” (Psalm 120), if you are a constitutional insomniac in search of respite, let Advent remind you of the God of Paradoxes who births peace in a feeding trough, and assures peace amid our broken hallelujahs.
Order arises out of Chaos, for the Comforter is at work.