Thursday, November 29, 2012

What does Jesus want for Christmas? #2


Let every heart prepare him room.  But my heart is cluttered, jammed to over- flowing, and it’s not all pretty.  I’m booked, slammed, juggling because two hands won’t hold it all.  I have commitments, activities, responsibilities, possessions.  I suspect that when Jesus knocks on my door, he hears me holler, Uh, hang on a minute… and while he waits his mind drifts to the story his mother told him about the inn in Bethlehem having no vacancy.

   What Jesus wants for Christmas is a vacancy, an opening, some room.  He can’t be crammed into my heart if I keep everything I’ve accumulated.  I have to do some letting go, I have to get on my Spring cleaning here in late November. 

   What Jesus wants from me for Christmas isn’t so much some ability I might have – although he gave me whatever ability I have so I could use it for him.  What Jesus wants isn’t my ability but my availability.  I may have ability, but frankly I’m just not available to God, or to the people God loves – and thus I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.  No wonder I wonder what the point of it all might be.

   Can my prayer be listening more than talking?  Dare I pray Speak, Lord, your servant is listening?

   Can I divest myself of a few things this Christmas?  Santa Claus wants to haul more things down the chimney and into my cluttered world.  Maybe in my imagination I reverse that chimney function and toss my busyness, my over-commitments, my divided loyalties, my frenetic pace, into the fire, and let the holy smoke waft up toward Jesus, who will then know I’m here, I’m available, there’s room in the inn.