“The best thing of all is God is with us.” – John Wesley.
Eventually, on my journey, ravaged and broken as it has been, I found myself all out of self-sufficiency cards. Literally broke, life in tatters, and spiritually smashed to smithereens. I had a hole in the soul you could drive a truck through.
With the passage of time, I have come to believe that these were the preconditions for this little black sheep to reach out to the living the God. I had been an unwilling visitor to the dark side of the moon, and camped out there for longer than anyone should. When you’re all out of hope, and it feels like your next move might take you out of the game entirely, even the God thing is worth a try.
So, where the hell was God during all those years of darkness? Perhaps the hardest thing to perceive about the living God is to realize in your inner being, your true self, that God is never, ever, missing. This means acknowledging that even in the darkest night, the God of life and love is with us. There is no banishing into an outer darkness devoid of God. Rather, there is for everyone times of darkness and light, of immense beauty, and the hideous bleakness of the dark. This is all part of the journey. The living Spirit, who is love and compassion in the now, is just as present in the dark as in the longed-for blessed light. We cannot be abandoned by God because the life-giving Spirit of God is innate in use. This inner light may feel like it barely flickers sometimes, but it has an unstoppable ability to fire up when needed, to reignite and guide our inner sight.
It is, as they say, “beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” If we pull back the tinsel and fairy lights a little, we might get a glimpse of the enduring and central message of Christmas. This is that living God is incarnate in the world, and always dwells with us. God is not off in the heavens who knows where, doing who knows what, but fully present, comrades—in darkness and in light—in the here-and-now on earth.
Of course, Christmas has a special meaning for Christians, and this is all to the good. But the genesis of this story about God dwelling with us predates Christianity and, like so much of Christian scripture, finds its roots in the writing and storytelling of the Hebrews. Long before the Christian scribes penned their special message about the God with skin on man, born in Bethlehem, the consummate storytelling, Hebrew mystics, prophets, and poets, had been singing a different, yet similar song about the nearness of God:
Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you… (Isa 41.10).
The living God, my dear comrades, is as close as our next breath, and does indeed turn darkness into light (Gen 1:3; Mic 7:8; Ps 18:28). Our task is simply to reach for the mystic light switch and turn it on.
– Cormac Stagg, author of The Quest for a Humble Heart