I was “feasting” with God earlier this week in a rare quiet moment when one little word jumped off the page of the book in my hands and captured my attention. For some reason, that one simple word struck a chord with the mom in me and gave me a new perspective on this marvelous season we call “Christmas.” I was reading from Preparing for Jesus, an advent devotion book by Walter Wangerin JR, who writes…
O Father of our Lord Jesus…
Rouse us. Stir up our hearts. Let heaven intrude upon our earthly affairs to rip our attentions from the world to you again.
Christmas is such an intrusion.
At Christmas heaven invaded the world…
There it was-the word that so often defines my days or describes my moment to moment frustrations: INTRUSION. What mother can’t relate to that nine-letter concept? It seems that most of my days in this season of motherhood are highlighted by a series of INTRUSIONS. The spilled chocolate milk that seeped from the sippy cup with the broken valve and left a brown trail across the entire length of our beige-carpeted upstairs was an intrusion on my time (Two hours later I finally scrubbed out the last of the brown polka-dots) and my wish for a surface-clean house (the milk, of course, was spilled on the day I was hosting a small group of women in my home). The wide-awake baby at 4:30 AM each morning is an intrusion on my wish for sleep and solitude- neither of which I enjoy on a regular basis. The toddler tantrum in the middle of Wal Mart is an intrustion on my pride (who’s child IS that anway?) and my pace (I just wanted to run through quickly for a box of diapers and a gallon of milk!) And the mob of boot-clad children who are running in and out of our home with snow-covered garments today in celebration of their first SNOW DAY off from school are a minor intrusion on my plan to meet a girl friend at the gym and enjoy some adult conversation.
Yes, I can relate to the concept of an “intrusion.” In fact, I believe that becoming a mother simply set me up for a lifetime of intrusions. Come to think of it, just bringing a precious bundle of life home from the hospital (five times over) has intruded upon every selfish thought and self-serving ambition that I’ve ever had (no more sleeping on MY time table, no more uninterrupted conversations with my husband, no more eating merely what I’d like to eat- my nursing babies never seem to love ice cream and coffee like I do!) And yet, those five intrusions have transformed me in ways that I never dreamed possible. Using the very lives of my five children, the Lord has intruded upon the woman who I was in order to shape me more and more into the woman He dreams me to be. He’s taken a self-centered, inflexible and rather prideful heart and had begun to turn it into a place that His only Son can call “HOME.”
Speaking of God’s son, I can’t help but wonder if His mother, too, often felt the discomfort of INTRUSION as the Lord used her life to accomplish His perfect plan for the world. Did Mary feel as if her life had been INTRUDED upon when the angel called her “favored” and announced that she had been chosen to bear God’s son. Did she feel as if her pride had been INTRUDED upon when she went from being the town good girl to the town harlot as the rumor of her pregancy was confirmed by her expanding middle? Did Joseph feel INTRUDED upon when the angel told him to take his new little family and flee the country in order to avoid Herod’s wrath (so much for the plan to be a small town carpenter and live in Nazareth the rest of his days)? Truly, Christmas was an invasion! By God’s grace, it was! Heaven intruded upon earth. Light intruded upon darkness. And, by God’s GREAT MERCY, the tiny baby that intruded upon the world on that first Christmas night continues to change eternity for all who say “YES” to His INTRUSION upon their hearts.
Oh, Holy Savior, INTRUDE on me AGAIN; over and over until Your INTRUSION upon my life becomes LIFE itself!
Today’s Treasure: For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have ETERNAL LIFE! John 3:16
