Wholly Bible: A View from the Pew

By Ray Waddle

At church last week the choir sang: "I look from afar: And lo, I see the power of God coming ..."

These Advent words always hit me. The year's many anxious debates and worries fall momentarily away. It's like a market correction: The Christmas story shifts to the foreground to reassert a basic fact of life -- the journey of it all.

Look at all the biblical Christmas characters who are on a journey, moving toward their place of destiny. Mary and Joseph make the slow trek to Bethlehem. The Wisemen follow the sky. Shepherds arrive. Angels arrive.

Only Herod stays put, fearful and devious.

After the birth, no rest. More journeying. The Magi go home "by another road." Jesus' family must escape to Egypt. Decades later, Jesus of Nazareth turns His face toward Jerusalem to begin the difficult walk for the world's redemption.

Then the story of the Resurrected Christ itself makes its way across the world.

At holiday time, people take an odyssey, too -- endeavoring to get back home, hurrying one last time to the mall, trying to get to a better emotional place of peace and reconciliation, or sending help for the vast array of needs after a bad year of hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Even sitting in a chair, everybody's floating forward on the raft of time. Ready or not, all are time-travelers into the unknown future.

At this time of year I'm susceptible to watching the sky, the same sky that guided the Wisemen, and hearing the season's poetry, which clarifies the big picture.

"If you could turn your heart into a cow stall," says 17th century German poet Angelius Silesius, "Christ would be born again on earth." That suggests making yet another voyage, to a meeting place of heart, mind and Christ, an inner Bethlehem, journey's end.

--Ray Waddle is a writer in Nashville. His latest book is
 Against the Grain: Unconventional Wisdom from Ecclesiastes.