Saturday
16th December
This time of year is so full. There are
distractions everywhere. The chaos makes you look away from what matters,
forces you to focus on the insignificant or the urgent and miss out on the
truly important. Today, take a few minutes to step back from the malaise of
working in Brussels in December. From trying to finish up projects, get that
last paper in, manage a final marketing push, planning Christmas for the
family, buying presents - the list goes on. Those things are big, and they will
be there at the end of this moment too.
I’m reflecting today on the God we’re
preparing for in Advent. The God the Psalmists built toward was big. I can’t
think of a better way to describe it - they took us on an emotional journey of
finding God in the heights and depths of human experience. In this psalm, we’re
nearing the end of how the collection was put together, and the psalmist is
simply singing about who God is. Great. Mighty. Gracious and compassionate. A
just king. A loving Lord. Glorious.
The Psalms all together are a bit like
a symphony. Sound on sound, deed on deed, attribute on attribute, the psalmists
weave together the symphony of the Lord, building on one another and getting
louder and louder. At this point in the book of Psalms, the writers have built
to a crescendo about the greatness of God, the wonder of the mighty one who
loves us and saves us.
Then, the God we thought we’d prepared
for arrives. Immanuel. God with us.
Someone once told me that the most
powerful tool a composer can use in creating music is silence. In the symphony
of God, we come to Christmas, a moment of silence, where the most important
thing about God isn’t bigness, but smallness. Easily overlooked, though the
heavens themselves cried out “Come and see! Stop what you’re doing; come and
see.” Not as we were expecting, and yet, still the one we were singing about
all along.
May we stop what we’re doing in this
season. Not forever. Just long enough to come and see.
Natalie
Jones
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