If Advent is about learning to “wait”, I think that the 12 days that mark the season of Christmas are about learning to “wonder”. I mean, after all this waiting, I would expect something BIG. Something flashy, powerful, overwhelming, dramatic, and impressive. If God is coming to planet earth, surely that would be an amazing entrance: grand, full of spectacle, and impossible to avoid.
Instead, we get a baby. Instead, we get something almost un-noticed, save for a few shepherds and a handful of others. (And, of course, the entire heavenly host, but in earthly terms, it was almost un-noticed.)
This is a remarkable picture of the mysterious bottom-up work of the mustard-seed Kingdom, that is planted in small seed-form but grows inevitably until one day all of Creation will be transformed and there will be a New Earth and a New Heaaven. In the birth of the helpless God, dependent on his parents’ care, requiring diapers and nursing and all of that oh-so-human-stuff, we see the power of the all-powerful God deeply hidden in the ordinariness of humanity. Which, in the end, is a picture of ministry and mission: the power of the all-powerful God deeply hidden in the ordinariness of humanity — in the ordinariness of you and I.
If that isn’t cause for wonder, I don’t know what is. We’ve learned to wait, in Advent. Now, let’s learn to wonder!
Cut to the Chaise 