I always find it interesting that God didn’t just descend on the clouds a full grown man first time round. He elected to grow in a womb at the mercy of a young girl; to be born a baby in a possibly unhygienic setting; to be raised by the same young girl and her husband – who knew that the child wasn’t his; to be a refugee in exile.
It’s also interesting that in the church’s calendar there are nine months from Easter to Christmas, leaving 4 months between Christmas and Easter. Its almost as though the detail of the growing up years, the nurturing years (granted there isn’t much in the bible to go on) are unimportant.
Over the few days following Christmas however, I have been pondering the seeming silence of the growing years. What emerged was a question regarding how I would respond to the responsibility given to these young parents. Then the realisation that the very responsibility was in a strange way, my own also. Born was a baby, born with that baby was an idea which I had to live a life responding to. My response to that idea would be either purpose in life and death or emptiness for myself and others.
This then is an invitation to join in the pondering what those in between years would look like for you. The carol services are gone for another twelve months. There might be an invitation to an easter service coming in the next few months. What would have happened to that baby; that seed; that idea in the in-between time? Would answers to the questions raised have been pursued or ignored?
It's Complicated 