The image here was painted by an artist friend named Alice Robertson. (Thank you, Alice, for your gift and generousity). 

Today (and yesterday) the world celebrates … in various ways and God knows we need joy in our world right now…yet for Christians the centre-point is the whereabouts of God. At least that’s how I am thinking about it today. In a world as broken as ours, even in its heartbreaking beauty, where the God we claim created it can be found and lives is an important question.

“Where are you?” Gen 3:8 are the first words Scripture places in God’s mouth. It’s ironic, really, given that we usually think about the question the other way around: “Where is God” is all of this? But actually, where God is, according to this day’s origin, is here: in the human; amongst the mess; in the fragile, the weak, the imperfect, the vulnerable. Emmanuel: God is with us.

And I think it is the connectedness of human life that is moving me this year. The people we love, the people who know us, the people who can drive us mad, but without whom life just would not make sense. So I want to hold that thought, today.

There is a reading that touched me a while back and has accompanied these past few months. It’s in a book entitled Wisdom 7: 22-23

“There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy,
unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted,
distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen,
irresistible, beneficent, humane,
steadfast, sure, free from anxiety,
all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetrating through all spirits
that are intelligent, pure, and altogether subtle.

I think I was feeling a little stressed about my in-between space in the men’s worlds of Church and academia, and the contestable female evocation of wisdom felt in some way southing, but it was the word “invulnerable” that held my attention. It’s not something I tend to value, but there was a call there: to freedom, I think. To ignore what is not worth it and lean into what does; to “not sweat the small stuff”, as one of my sisters often says, but what really counts; to let the opinions of those who are not important for your and God’s plan fade into the background; to allow the actual presence of incarnated Love take centre-stage: in prayer and daily life; silence and others.

One of my research students this year said something in one of his presentations that stayed with me: the need to make friends with time. This from someone who is against the clock to write his thesis. But his gentle embracing of what’s possible and what is not, in that process, inspired me. God is found in our time and space.

So I pray that the “slow-down of Christmas allows you (and I) to hold that space gently but clearly.

“I will make my home in them.” Ezekiel 37:27

For more of Alice’s work see here.