Advent - "Meanwhile..."

Shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem

There were shepherds in that region, out in the open, keeping a night watch around their flock. An angel of the Lord stood in front of them. The glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ the angel said to them. ‘Look: I’ve got good news for you, news which will make everybody very happy. Today a savior has been born for you – the Messiah, the Lord! – in David’s town. This will be the sign for you: you’ll find the baby wrapped up, and lying in a feeding-trough.’

Suddenly, with the angel, there was a crowd of the heavenly armies. They were praising God, saying,

‘Glory to God in the highest,
     and peace upon earth among those in his favour.’

Gospel of Luke, chapter 2 verses 8 - 14, New Testament for Everyone (NTE)

______________________

If you've ever listened to one of those old radio programs, the ones your grandparents tuned in every night when they were kids, you'll know what I'm talking about. The hero is crushed with problems, the background music is somber, things are looking bleak. But then the narrator intones, "Meanwhile, on the other side of town...!" And the entire scene changes.

That happens in this scripture.

True, Mary and Joseph had both seen angels nine months ago, and great things were foretold about this child Mary carried. They were told that this was the prophesied one, the Messiah, the hope of all Israel. But since then, nothing much had happened. They remained poor peasants. No other angelic visitations occurred. They eked by on Joseph's job, for which there was precious little demand in a tiny backwater village like Nazareth. The holy infant grew in Mary's womb, but she still had to fetch water, bake bread, fix holes in Joseph's sweaty clothes. Life just went on, like it always did.

And God didn't even do something about that census; the increasingly pregnant teenage girl and her husband still had to make the dangerous, arduous, dusty 90 mile journey to Bethlehem. Why would God allow the woman who carried the "Son of the Most High" to risk having a miscarriage?

Now here they are in a feculent stable -- not even a house! -- while the mother of the Messiah writhes through her birth throes in a pile of bloody, insect infested straw. Look where they would, there was nothing to validate that this was the Messiah being born. For such an event shouldn't there be at least something slightly glorious? It was all so dirty, so pedestrian, so ordinary.

But meanwhile, on the other side of town...

Light

It was ordinary there too. Ordinary shepherds (not an occupation with the best reputation) watching their ordinary sheep, as they always did. And then -- then for a very brief time the curtain between Heaven and Earth parted.

The renowned Angel of the Lord, mentioned throughout their sacred scriptures, stood before these ordinary shepherds, and shafts of indescribably bright, glorious light flooded and transformed the hills. And the Angel proclaimed in heart shaking tones that this ordinary night was not ordinary at all, that in reality the most important event in the history of the universe was happening right here, right now -- right among the filth and the sheep and the bloody straw and the pains of an exhausted young woman in labor. The choir of "heavenly forces" that joined the Lord's Angel sang a hymn that linked these two realities: "Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors."

Where the angelic host lived every being was alive and electric with the overwhelming magnitude of what was taking place in tiny Bethlehem; where Mary and Joseph and the shepherds lived it looked for all the world like business as usual.

As it can for us -- but it's not. As followers of Jesus we serve the High King of the universe, and we are called to perform an all-important mission: To build his Kingdom through self-sacrificing love and the power of the Gospel. We don't have the chance too often to be encouraged by angels and we may get caught up in the sheer ordinariness of our lives, or in our sufferings, or our grief. Is there any significance to my life at all? Do I make any difference?

But there is another reality, the ultimate reality. Meanwhile, on the other side of that curtain is a world that is quite sure of the extraordinary nature of our ordinary lives.

*          *          *

Prayer: Lord of all realities, please give us the miraculous gift of Faith so we can see our ordinary existence through your eyes.  In the name of our King, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Errr... ummm...

I just wanted to apologize for Authentic Light's outage, which some of you encountered yesterday. We recently changed domain hosts and the move went into effect yesterday. All of the Internet didn't get the message all at once, including my part. As a result there was nothing to see here for awhile. 

But Authentic Light is back on now. Thank you for your patience!

Gone With the Wind

Hi! Just want to let you all know that I'll be at a conference all next week and won't be able to post here. So what I'll do is re-post some older things I wrote, possibly with a little editing.  I hope you enjoy them.

A Few ideas

This is the third of four posts that, unlike most articles here, are all about this blog. The others are here and here. Today we'll talk about what we'll be talking about in 2014.

So here's my plan: First, I have one more of these posts to do, that one about what exactly the Authentic Light blog is trying to accomplish.

After that I plan to finish up the series on what the Gospel is that I began all the way back in November. As you probably know, I file most articles in the red 'bins' at the top of the blog, each one of which stands for sections of the Apostles' Creed. This series will be kept in the 'Christ' bin and the 'Christian Movement' bin since it's about Jesus and we're the ones tasked with spreading it.

Once that's done we'll move on other parts of basic Christianity. Its rather shameful that in all this time I haven't written anything substantial about the Holy Spirit, "the forgiveness of sins," and "resurrection and life everlasting," don't you think? I'll start with those first, probably starting with the Spirit just because of who he is.

After there is at least one article in every 'bin' we'll go back to posting on the whole of basic Christianity. I'd particularly like to write a lot more on the Father and really need to finish up my series on the Trinity.

If any of you have something you'd like see covered please drop me a line from the Contact page or leave a comment below. If it's within the bounds of basic Christianity I'd love to talk about it. The final post in this series, which will happen next week, will give a clearer idea of what I mean by "basic Christianity."

Posting Schedule

Since this is the beginning of the secular year I thought I'd start it with a few informative posts about what we do or plan to do on this blog. I put up the first one -- about using the Easy-to-Read Version as my main Bible this year -- earlier this week. Today's will be a short one mainly about my posting schedule, tomorrow I'll let you know what I'm planning to write about in the foreseeable future, and #4 will be a description (other than the 'About Authentic Light' page) of what I'm trying to accomplish here.

So Authentic Light's schedule:

I intend to post articles on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Sunday's will be the regular "Meditation for a Sunday Morning" with a scripture and comment on its subject by a wise follower of Jesus -- usually an ancient follower, but not always.

Tuesday and Thursday will have little articles on some aspect of simple, radical Christianity, the most exciting topic on earth.

The rest of the days may or may not contain other random posts, depending on my opportunities. Feel free to drop by or subscribe and see what's here. And I'm constantly tweeting at @AuthenticLight, so the little scrolling Twitter app over on the right side always has something new.

Reboot

You may have noticed if you pay attention to the dates on my posts, which tend to mean less than on other blogs, that there haven't been any from May til October. Dates mean less because I intend these as fragments of teaching on various aspects of Christianity that (hopefully) will form a coherent whole someday. The posts aren't day by day so much as idea by idea. I write them as they come, then toss them into an appropriate box in the navigation bar near the top of the page, which is arranged to roughly correspond to the articles of the Apostles Creed.

But I noticed I'd wondered away from my purpose and became rather bland and insipid in the process, so I stopped. Now, after trying to discern what Christ wants me to do with this (a question I've also been asking of other aspects of my life), I'm back to try again.

So, taking my cue from the 'Batman' franchise, I've rebooted. For one thing I've thrown out the former gloomy, portentous site design and replaced it with something lighter and fresher. I'm still fixing up a few other things, like writing a new 'About Us' page and deleting a few repetitive posts.

But the main thing is that Authentic Light is now back to being a humble little site where interested parties can learn about, well, the Authentic Light -- simple, radical Christianity.