LOVEWe all inherit something from our progenitors: insanely blue eyes like my husband's, a Romanesque nose (also like my husband's), a dashing smile, sanguine personality, hearty laugh, or broad shoulders. My brother, Rob, and I both inherited chocolate brown eyes, dark hair and prematurely degenerative lower backs.
This Advent, as I was waiting for Christmas, I was also waiting for Rob and his family to visit for the holidays. Despite a re-injury of his back - from putting his one-year-old into his crib - Rob made the long fight from LA to Chicago. On Christmas Eve he (who did not inherit the Drama Chromosome as I did) lay writhing in pain on the bed in my parent's room. The kids and I stopped the Natal Drama to go into the master, anoint Rob with olive oil and pray for a reprieve from pain that 'felt like a rusty nail stabbing his low back, hip and right leg.'
On Sunday I thought of my brother as I led worship from the piano and sang,
Immanuel, Our God is with us. And if God is with us who can stand against us? Our God is with us, Immanuel. And as the congregation read the following adaptation of Eugene Peterson's translation of John 1, I thought about my friend
Bev who is pregnant and four days past her due date. Both my brother and
Bev: waiting for a word, waiting for deliverance from pain, waiting for a new life.
RESPONSIVE READING, DECEMBER 28
th 2008
LEADER:
The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word. The Word was God in readiness for God from day one.
MEN:
Everything was created through him; nothing – not one thing! – came into being without him.
WOMEN:
What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by. The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness
couldn’t put it out.
ALL:
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. Immanuel, God with us!
LEADER:
John the Baptist was sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.
WOMEN:
The Life-Light was the real thing: Every person entering Life he brings into Light.
MEN:
He was in the world, the world was there through him, and yet the world
didn’t even notice he came to his own people, but they
didn’t want him.
LEADER:
But whoever did want him, who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, he made to be their true selves.
ALL:
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. Immanuel, God with us!
With the coming of Christmas, my Advent waiting has ended. The Life-Light has come into the
darkness. Yet, with Rob and
Bev, I continue to wait as they walk through Personal Advents. Rob and his family cut their trip to Chicago short, flying back to LA on Christmas Day. As I write he is undergoing what could be a five hour surgery to alleviate two 'massively herniated' discs.
Bev is still awaiting the birth of her baby boy. I remain with both of them in hope and
expectancy and with this poem:
Waiting for Word
for Rob on the day of his back surgery
December 2008
On a day filled with
thoughts of you,
I feel pregnant with
expectancy, waiting for Word
by phone or Internet
or Spirit Whisper that
you’re OK and resting
in the safety of darkness
beginning to break
like waters bringing forth
new life once secreted by womb
that – by yielding, going with the pain –
fades from deepest obscurity
to a bright pink and screaming dawn
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