Monday, December 04, 2017

Advent: Presence

My atheist friends may disagree, but I think it's fair to say that we spend most of our life searching for the Presence of God.

In some ways it's like the hour before lunch. Nothing drives us to food like hunger; to water, like thirst; to friends, like loneliness; to justice, like oppression. It's the very absence of God that makes us want to experience his presence. It's that very moment of need meeting satisfaction that glows with the light of heaven.

The gospels tell us that Christmas is when God saw our need and pitched his tent among us, making our life his and his life with us. We enter the Presence of God not when we cloister ourselves away with other like-minded people, but when we follow his example and shelter the immigrant from deportation, speak up for the woman being sexually harassed, reach out to the lonely with a call and offer of friendship, oppose favoritism for the wealthy, and resist evil in places both high and low.

At that moment, a miracle occurs. In meeting the need of another, we experience the Presence, and so do they.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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