I handle to roll away from bed only a tad sooner than regular. I stumble down the steps, collapse into an incredible, leathery chair, and pull out my pile of religious studying. I shut my eyes, soak up a deep breath, bless myself, and…
I hear the scampering toes of my two little women as they tumble out of their very own beds and stroll into the hallway and down the steps.
“It’s not time to come back downstairs but,” I growl. “It’s best to nonetheless be asleep.”
“I’ve to go to the lavatory,” one insists.
“I’m hungry,” the opposite says. “So hungry.”
I purse my lips collectively, figuring out that any probability at contemplative silence is lengthy gone. I’m not going to listen to the tip of my youngest’s insupportable starvation till she’s chowed via no less than a bowl of cereal.
“High quality,” I say, making an enormous present of placing my books again on the shelf. I’ll pray tomorrow.
Some mixture of those core components derails most days of morning prayer—that’s, except I actually creep downstairs in these earliest of hours. I normally don’t, although, and so discover the Holy Spirit’s whisper rapidly drowned out by questions concerning the faculty lunch menu and whether or not or not outside recess is within the playing cards for the day.
I’m of two minds on the matter. On the one hand, I actually ought to get up earlier. If I need time to be alone with God, then I’ve to stand up and make that point. It’s my very own fault for sleeping in. However then a sense of failure seeps in, a way that I’m disappointing God and, nicely, that’s not the God I consider in. That’s not the God who is consistently delighting.
Alternatively, I believe these rampaging kids operating roughshod over my prayer are maybe half of that prayer. God is perhaps saying one thing to me by sending these little messengers to interrupt my peace and false sense of management.
The query then turns into: How do I reply?
Effectively, most days, irritably. It’s best to nonetheless be asleep. I’m making an attempt to hope. Can’t you give me a little bit peace and quiet? You may wait one other ten minutes for cereal, can’t you? And so forth.
I’ll wager these aren’t the charitable responses with which God hopes I greet my kids. And so, I’m given an opportunity to strive once more day after day.
All through Creation, we await the start of the Christ Little one. We’ve sanitized the occasion and the imagery. It’s a silent evening, proper? The whole lot seems to be clear and tidy, even for a barn stuffed with animals! Any of us who has spent greater than ten minutes within the presence of a kid is aware of that such quiet tidiness is an phantasm.
I return to these two little women barreling across the nook and bursting the bubble of my sanitized prayer house. They arrive with questions, with wants, with tales, and with a need to attract intimately close to.
Does God need me to stay in that silent nook preserving the noise of these kids at arm’s size? Or does God need me to be taught one thing from a toddler who interrupts?
That’s what we have fun at Christmas: the interruption of a kid. The shattering of the establishment. An invite to see issues anew, to ask questions, and to attract close to to others.
How will we let the Christ Little one break into our meticulously maintained religious bubbles this yr? And might we see that bursting as a continuation of the prayer we’ve already begun?
