{"id":10548,"date":"2018-12-15T22:42:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T22:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/?p=10548"},"modified":"2020-12-23T18:08:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-23T18:08:58","slug":"sanitized-convenience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/soul-significance\/sanitized-convenience\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanitized for your Convenience?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know why but for some reason I have this hangover from my early religious training – that God abhors a mess. \u00a0There was a season many years ago that I can remember teaching that the Father actually turned His face away from Jesus on the cross because Jesus was becoming sin (on our behalf) and a Holy God couldn’t look on sin. \u00a0A twisted view of God,\u00a0to say the least.<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem is… I don’t need that kind of God<\/strong>. You know the kind of God who bails out on you when you really need Him. \u00a0 Those times when you feel so overwhelmed by life, by loneliness, and feel completely helpless in your own darkness. \u00a0The times where you feel helpless. \u00a0That even if you thought you could change, that things could get better; you wouldn’t know where to start or where the energy to make the change would even come from.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, I hope we know that this is not the God of Jesus. \u00a0 By the demonstration of the Incarnation alone – while we were still screwed up – God became fully human in the person of Jesus. \u00a0He waded right into the muck and mire, the pain and dysfunction and met us there to rescue us.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In years past we would have attended a really nice live nativity in our community. \u00a0It was really <\/span>lovely and quite moving. \u00a0Last year, as we climbed into our vehicle to return home, my wife turned to me and said “I was struck by how neat and clean our retelling of the Nativity story is. \u00a0It is all so Christmas Card perfect.<\/strong> \u00a0But, it does occur to me that this wasn’t the case\u00a02000 years ago.”<\/span><\/p>\n

We have a tendency to sanitize some of our beloved stories whether it be a polished cross at Easter or our Nativity. \u00a0 From our vantage we see how things all worked out – how <\/span>baby was born, who the baby was; the angels, wise men, and shepherds got it. \u00a0But for a moment, what must it have been like 2000 plus years ago? \u00a0 A young <\/span>woman who finds herself mysteriously with child. \u00a0Angels were appearing with crazy stories of her carrying the long-past-due Messiah. \u00a0 A husband who <\/span>knowing his wife-to-be\u00a0was pregnant by someone else and still choosing to marry her.<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine getting ready to give birth, and there is no place for this to happen and you are a long way from home. \u00a0Imagine the stress and anxiety. \u00a0Imagine the stress and worry of a young father, wanting to care and provide for his wife and soon to be born child. \u00a0Imagine what it must have been like in desperation to have to give birth in the feed trough of animals. \u00a0I can’t imagine it as a Hallmark moment depicted in our greeting cards. \u00a0How many Christmas retellings have you heard that include Herod ordering the extermination of all male children under the age of 2 years of age? \u00a0A really messy part of the story, for sure!<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess this is why the picture entitled Jose’ y Maria<\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0struck me as so profound. \u00a0A modernized depiction that takes the shine off the story and plunks it down in our everyday commonness. \u00a0To the onlooker, Joseph and pregnant Mary would have appeared no different to our modern eyes than the couple in the cartoon. \u00a0Perhaps we have walked by folks who looked like this going into the local 7-11? \u00a0The commonness should offend our religious piety<\/strong>. \u00a0It should pull the pin on the super-spiritual image of the parents of Jesus and re-orients the God-who-loves smack in the middle of creation as it really is.<\/span><\/p>\n

All this to say, the Holy God has no problem with wading into the mess that human life can often be, and I think we need to be careful about over-spiritualizing Mary and Joseph, and all the stories of people in scripture. \u00a0 We cannot sanitize them to the extent that they cease to be real people, with real fears, anxieties, questions, and doubts<\/strong>. \u00a0 To sanitize them is to make them unreachable for folks like me and perhaps many others, who need a real God, who interacts with real people in real situations. \u00a0To sanitize these people and their stories may make for great preachin’, TV specials, and children’s stories but is no real comfort for a very real person trying to walk out this thing called faith in real life. \u00a0You see, \u00a0I need the God of the mess as well as the God of order. \u00a0I need God when things are messy, uncertain and scary.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Good News is no matter what happens God is with us, and Jesus is the guarantee and the demonstration of this truth. \u00a0 I have come to believe that faith isn’t so much believing that God will do this, or He will do that. \u00a0 Faith, for me, is in the growing experience that\u00a0God is indeed good. \u00a0That He loves me perfectly and securely because of the way I am held in Christ. \u00a0With the assurance that I am never truly alone, however, and wherever I find myself.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don’t know why but for some reason I have this hangover from my early religious training – that God abhors a mess. \u00a0There was a season many years ago that I can remember teaching that the Father actually turned His face away from Jesus on the cross because Jesus was becoming sin (on our…","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[58,167,172,179,482],"class_list":["post-10548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soul-significance","tag-authentic-living","tag-everyday-spirituality","tag-experiencing-god","tag-faith-in-real-life","tag-spiritual-formation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}