Susandoodles

Earlier this fall, I began reading Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ.  I found myself reading what I have long believed—Christ is everywhere! 

Therefore, when I started looking for an Advent reading, this theme lead me to Matt Rawle’s Experience Christmas:  Christ in the sights and Sounds of Advent.  And so I started my reading.

Week 1 focuses on the sense of sight.  If Christ is in everything, then I could not imagine a better way to begin—seeing Christ.

One factor of Rohr’s explanation is important to know:  Christ is an inclusive name that is the trinity of God:  God the father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Spirit which is God within us.

As I began reading Rawle’s first week, I quickly found the first thought that gave me pause.  God the creator ‘sees’ things as he creates.  Then as creation begins to evolve, even what he sees passes into what he ‘saw’.  

All of the sudden I was reading the word ‘saw’ over and over.  I had to stop, I had to reread, and I had to reflect on the significance of God seeing as a past tense action.

And then I continued. 

As God’s creation continued moving forward, he was watching.  He saw the good and the evil.  He saw sins.  He saw love.  And he did not give up on us.

Rawle’s book does an interesting thing.  He uses one critical statement as a full-page poster.  These statements help the reader to see the logic of his thinking.  I would challenge readers to see these statements somewhat like the old geometry proofs we had to write/formulate as we prove a theory.  I share these as the steps that Rawle takes us through the sense of sight as God prepares us for our remembrance of Jesus’ birth—as Christ on earth to guide us.

• We ponder, “Do you see what I seem” knowing now that God just might ask us the same question.
• There’s more to Advent than waiting in anticipation.  There is hope.
• The journey from anticipation to expectation hinges on hope.  
• Expectation changes what we see . . . .  We anticipate destruction, but Jeremiah looks with eyes of hope and offers the expectation of rebirth.
• We anticipate a baby, but do we expect to see salvation?

The Advent season is one where so much of our attention is focused on the trappings, the giving of gifts, and all the parties that we fail to ‘see’ Christ.  What we see is not what God sees.  We lose Christ in all the trappings.  

As Christians, we need to cultivate seeing God in all that exists and happens around us.  As Christians, we are called to share God’s love in any way that we can.

I challenge all of us, me included, to use this season of hope looking for Christ in our immediate world, but also seeing the world through God’s eyes and transforming what we see into prayers to God for his love to lead us, all of us, to find ways to put love into action in any way we can, in any place we can, for anyone we can.

May this Advent season be a season you see God in all that hear, and open your heart in prayer.