I posted all these nifty things abut Advent, one for each week, fully intending to write something just like it for Christmas. You know, the post about what it means that Jesus is here, that He came into the world, that I have Jesus in my life. Like the other posts, I could surround it with nifty quotes from the Bible and call it done.
It hasn't quite worked out that way.
I thought about it. I read all the readings. I went to three services at two different churches. You would think I'd be so crammed full of words and ideas that this blog post would write itself -- or at least be splattered with a jumble of words that exploded out of me.
But no: nothing. At the end of the day, I have no fully formed idea of what it means that Jesus came into the world. I have no idea what that means for and in my life. Oh sure, I have a lot of theological ideas in my head about salvation and light and theosis. But that doesn't really tell me what it means.
I know what Jesus' birth means for me in little ways, in the small ways it affects my life and my decisions. But I don't really have a handle on the big picture. It's just too much: too large, too bright, too encompassing. I can't see it. I can't get a firm grasp on it. It's like trying to see the blinding light of the sun. It's blurry and uncertain and cannot be fixed in my sight. I see what the sunlight does to the world, but I just can't look into it and see it for itself.
So I admit it: I have no idea. There's nothing I could come up with other than this not-knowing, this not-understanding. Sorry, but I guess Christmas is just like that for me. I'm not quite sure how to face it head-on. It's easy to explain away uncertainty in the half-darkness of Advent. But when it comes to Christmas itself, I guess I'll just have to settle for living with blindness, and all the feelings that come with being unable to understand the biggest and most important thing in my life.
