Advent: Tenderly

Got a call this evening from someone feeling upset, overwhelmed and anxious. We talked for close to 40 minutes, and I hope at the end of the conversation that things were better than they were at the start.

Truth is, we're all broken; and the pain goes down far below the surface, sometimes into caverns where dark things lurk. Maybe it's an injury a friend once dealt us, maybe it's the fear stirred by the toxic air our president is brewing, or maybe it's the trauma of having to hide our true selves. It doesn't matter; the darkness is real, and so is the pain. "The darkness and the light are alike to you,: the psalmist writes. "I am fearfully and wonderfully made.'

Jesus, it should be remembered, never came for respectable people. He came for hookers and thieves, for traitors and sycophants, for the filthy, for the ignorant and for the unemployed, not to give them better manners or to make them acceptable, but to remind them that God was on their side. He knows where the pain is rawest, and he touches us there tenderly.

God willing, let us remember who his people are, and let us follow his example.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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