I woke up feeling particularly vulnerable today, that is not entirely surprising and I am not going to unpack that fact anymore at the moment other than to say that there are times in life when our security, or what has seemed to be our security is stripped away, we all experience it at different times and for different reasons.
How apt then that the word for today was taken from Isaiah 43, which includes the great promise:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God...
Not only did this remind me that I am not alone, but also that I am God's, I belong to God, and as such I can enter freely into the divine life of God where I am never alone. It has taken me years to realise that I do not have to earn God's blessing but that s/he gives it freely to us, that none are excluded from it, but that we all have the freedom to choose it. God in the form of the Holy Spirit literally gives herself to us, as God's breath in our lives, connecting to God in our deepest being, calling us to awaken to this glorious fact...
Jesus lived this out to the fullness and invites us to do the same, and we can, for he holds the door open to us and shows us it IS possible. In "Falling Upward" Richard Rhor reminds us that;
The Holy Spirit is always entirely for us, more than we are for ourselves it seems. She speaks in our favour against the negative voices that judge and condemn us. This gives us all such hope, now we don't have to do life by ourselves....
He calls us to awaken to the fact that God is always open to us, always longing for us to realise that his life is already pulsing through our lives for we are his creation. We have been redeemed, bought at a price, whether we know it or not, and that price is love. We are loved! We cannot be unloved, we can only feel unloved because we have not dared to receive or been shown love. Once we realise love we are called to conspire with God to love others and somehow others cease to be Other and we become one. This is the great divine conspiracy, we are called to conspire, to co-breathe with the God whose breath and life is love...
If Advent awakens anything in us it should open us to connect or reconnect with our deepest longing, a longing which all to often we try to placate with other things because we live too much on the surface of our lives. Jesus showed us what it was to live from the depths of his being, to receive nourishment through prayer and a connection with God that was deeper than breathing. To follow him is to follow him to the depths...
As I write this I am aware of a deep strength welling up within me that is beyond me and yet holding me, and all will be well for God can use every circumstance and turn it to good...
