Devotion 360 - Expectation

If I could order days by favorite to least, this Christmas Eve would teeter at the very top.  It had been near perfect.

A holiday lunch, all four of our children around the counter making gingerbread.  Then church and many hours spent at Grandpa’s opening gifts from distant family and friends.  

Finally we found ourselves around our tree reading a Christmas tale.  The children all with eyes sparkling wondering from youngest to oldest what the morning would bring.

It was magical in every way.  The children set out treats hoping Santa would be greeted warmly with their affection.  And then as my husband read the very last page he queried each child wondering what they thought Santa might leave.

As much as I am an avid list maker, I have somehow discouraged it in my children.  I grew up dog-earing the pages of the Sears catalogue but never actually making a list.

Christmas was one of mystery and magic.  When I was a child often a present would arrive before Christmas Eve with no name or tag and my brother and I would wonder at the wonderful of it all.

So our children suddenly left to their own imagination spilled their hopes and desires.  My youngest son and youngest daughter listed things we had never heard of and were fairly certain Santa had not brought.

We escorted them to bed, tucked in their expectant hearts and for a moment, my brain felt just a bit weary.  We had read our advent books, we had attended and hosted every holiday festivity imaginable and yet, at the 11^th hour, I suddenly felt we might disappoint.  Expectations, they are indeed the very thief of joy.

My husband and I uncovered the treasures wrapped, ribboned and hid, and then I silently prayed.  I prayed not so much for my children but for me. 

I have spent a year, this very past year, working diligently on removing expectations from my heart; expectations both of myself and others.

I had forgotten expectations sometimes are forced upon us when we least expect it.  I wanted to grip tightly on what I knew.  

This is all about Jesus, it is all about the tree and glory and redemption.  What happens under the tree is a moment; what happened on it was a life and death, and a miraculous healing for us all.

I saw that same little boy who had gone to bed worried rise on Christmas morning.  He stood at the top of the stairs as his siblings gathered around him and then he stopped.  He had forgotten the gifts he had purchased and made and wrapped and hidden.  He ran and filled his arms.  I looked deep into his sea blue eyes and knew he gets it.  It was not about what he would soon receive, but rather what he has been given.

Hours of joy and discovery unfolded and then in the late evening I found myself putting on the shelf the advent books I had withdrawn twenty-five days before  And I wondered what this next year would bring.  What does God expect?  That is truly all that matters. 

Storing the advent books, I withdrew a devotional.  I fingered forward to the 31^st   of December.  Words penned over one hundred years ago greeted me

I

said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.    

(Haskins, 1908)

A year closes, another begins.  Like a father who holds the hand of a child perplexed about presents, He comes and holds ours as we perplex about the future. 

Amazing this image.  He guides and comforts with constant Holy Spirit attention and yet we find ourselves facing the demons of both fear and loneliness.

We put on ourselves the pressure of what will come, when the most significant has already came that we might have LIFE and life ABUNDANT.

Oh Beloved, to embrace the day with this thought and to surrender fear and fretting for peace and joy. 

If we can have any expectation at all it is in knowing He will be with us, our hearts tightly grasped by His Spirit and our mind embraced by the truth of His mercy.

“We know that we cannot go to God, but God comes to us, enfolding us in his unbelievable grace.""
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer