We want to praise comfortable images of God. We want to be held warm in the palm of God’s hand. We want the nurturing of God as mother or caring father. We would prefer the singing, shouting and dancing of Jeremiah.
We don’t want uncomfortable images for God. We don’t want, “….who can stand before his cold?” However, God keeps moving our expectations and disrupting us with the uncomfortable.
Isn’t that a good thing? For it is the same God who, “… became flesh and lived among us…” Living amongst us here is literally setting up a tent among us. God getting down and dirty amongst the messiness of life. God travelling light amongst us. This was beyond expectations and disruptive to those who first heard.
This God who marks us with the seal of the Holy Spirit walks with us and sends us out in a spiral of growth that comforts and discomforts us, shifts our perceptions and drives us into deeper relationship with ourselves, others and the world in which we live. A Christmas gift that keeps on giving.
Graham Booth
Lay Preacher, Longford