I'm sitting in my office with my hands wrapped around a hot cup of chai. In order to have this "cuppa," I had to go out of my 68 degree office and down the much cooler (Tom says mid-50s) hallway; I then stood in the cold kitchenette (also 55 degrees) for 2 1/2 minutes while the microwave heated my water to the appropriate temperature. Gratefully, I warmed my hands and walked back to my office. There is little question that First Church has a warm heart, but the hallways are cold!
The minor challenge of negotiating from warm rooms through cold corridors served as a reminder to me that I am very blessed. There are far too many in our world who don't have any, or at least adequate, protection from the weather. They live their lives in boxes and tunnels, trying to scrape by and make do with what can be found discarded by those of us who have too much.
My "too much" is all around me; books stacked in bags and piles, looking like I have just come from the store. The reality is that the bags are part of my "filing system" so that I can find the books I am looking for at any given moment. But there are also boxes of books at my house that I have not unpacked from my last move into a smaller home.
Most of the time I can overlook the boxes and bags, but last week our daughter Joy brought back much of the furniture with which we had furnished her apartment. She was downsizing, moving from a one-bedroom apartment to an efficiency, and she said that she had discovered that she had "too much stuff!" Back came my grandmother's dining room table, three chairs, a bookcase, a bed ("You will need the bed!" I said; "No, I'll be sleeping on the floor" Korean-style), odds and ends of dishes and foodstuffs. The garage is once again full...not that it had been empty prior to the arrival of the bits and pieces of her life, coming to mingle with us again; Joy is not back home, but many of the things associated with her are.
It is easy for us to accumulate things that we don't really need. Some people are better than others at divesting themselves of the excess; John and I both tend to hang on to things (and people), never knowing when they might be necessary once again. Advent is a season when thoughtful Christians tend to reflect on the state of our souls as we are awaiting the birth of the Christ Child once again.
Jesus' birth is told as a story of a child whose family just barely had enough. We don't know how true that is, but we claim his birth as the birth of a child born to parents who are scraping by. Jesus, born in a manger, is born in a town where his parents apparently have no near family, and shortly after his birth they flee for their lives and raise the boy as an exile in Egypt.
Wandering parents...life lived in exile...no wonder Jesus claimed that he had no place to call "home!" And without a home, no way to collect a library...a closet full of clothes...china cabinets...and.... Joy brought back many of the things that we had given her (and some that she had collected on her own) and declared that she "never wanted to have so much stuff again!" We looked at her box of Christmas things, carefully packed and labled "Danger," and smiled. Now where will we keep this box?
My cup is empty, but my heart is full. Advent is here and the weather reminds me to think of others. A friend is collecting sleeping bags to pass out to the homeless in Denver CO on Christmas Day; a local friend, Beatty Brasch has ways of helping the poor (especially the working poor) here in Lincoln. I have been blessed by so much. It is time to find ways to share with others...anybody need a table?
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