Is there light?

In light of devastation - emotional, physical, spiritual, what is life? In light of pain, turmoil, trouble, what is life? In this life is there light?

Devastation all around seems to dampen the delight of divine beauty.

How it is that we can move into the holidays with hearts filled with good tidings and cheer? Where is our hope?

The complexity of the answer as to where is our hope, is found in the simplicity of what was done some 2000 years ago for the whole of humanity. Birth...death…hope.

Yes, a baby was born so that as a man He might hang on a tree.

One birth. One death. One tree. Three nails. Eternal hope.

Hope is wrapped in the truth of Immanuel - God with us. The only way to engage the happenings of today while seeking to celebrate the truth of life is found in the One who is life.

Jesus came to reign down hope. He came to shower us in joy. And with His entrance on the world stage He gave us the way to respond to the darkness that suffocates life.

Yes, Jesus came to suffocate us in His all-consuming love...

It is in His breath-taking performance that we are given the oxygen needed to ignite this world with His crazy insane love. A love that gives us the power to step directly into the devastation by giving ourselves over to the truth of Christmas... I mean really giving ourselves over.

When we give into the Christmas truth we find the truth of Mas Christ is what suffocates my darkness with the light of His eternal flame. And in the burning truth of His eternal love we come to witness the glory of heaven as it erupted through the birth of a baby. A birth that fills our hearts and lungs with the air of truth behind (and within) Christmas.

Let us this day prayerfully embrace the Holy Spirit so that we might exhale the grime of life. Let us this day ask the Spirit to fill us with His strength so that we might inhale the unrelenting Christmas hope that erupts in the birth of divine love. Amen Jesus.