It’s before the sunrises on a new week and the bed is warm and a blankets are begging for a few more minutes of sleep, but a different calling rises, greater… The need for a different kind of rest.
Blog after blog, Facebook post after Facebook post talk of this busy time of year for families… School programs, parties, sports practices, on top of the shopping and preparing and just general craziness… and even with only myself to worry about, the busyness still invades. It threatens to take over, but once again it’s why these quiet morning moments, no matter how long or short, are critical… Oxygen to make it through the season…food for a hungry heart…rest for a weary soul.
So the feet find their way to the floor, the candles get lit, the tree lights turned on, and I settle in. The Scripture for the day talks of this ladder where earth and heaven meet… where Jacob declared “this is the Lord’s place”.
Oh the ladders we climb–the corporate ladders, the keep-up-with-Jones’ ladders, the there’s-got-to-be-more-to-life ladders–all leaving us longing, never satisfied. And then the realization that the ladder connecting heaven and earth was never meant to be climbed, but one by which our Jesus came down to us. All my doings and thinkings and sayings can never make this “the Lord’s place” … Only the Lord in this place can do that. Like we’ve heard but so often forget, this Christianity thing is not about what we do but about what He has done.
And so on this quiet advent morning, I show up, not to climb a ladder, not to prove myself, not to “be-a-good-Christian girl”. I show up because He showed up… in a manger and on a cross. I come rest here not by my determination but by His invitation. I seek not to check some boxes, but to adore a King.
And while the activities may still swirl around us, we step into the rest of the day with these mile-markers of Advent not found in any ladder-climbing pursuit:
Hope…
Peace…
Joy…
Love.
We shine them bright in a dark, desperate world of fellow ladder-climbers… pointing to the One who came down and made those things possible.
I’m watching for You today, Jesus. Let’s do this day together! Amen!
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