...you've gotta be kidding me

Christians all, your Lord is coming, hope for peace is now at hand.
Let there be no hesitation, walk in faith where life demands.
Bear the word that God has given; share the birth that stirs your soul.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ will come and make you whole.
---Jim Miller, 1993

Prepare the way of the Lord. Wait...prepare the way of the Lord? It's struggle enough some days to prepare dinner tonight, or to prepare the presentation for the staff meeting tomorrow, or to prepare to hear the lab results from that medical exam you took last week. But to prepare the way of the Lord? What does that even mean, really, and how in this world are we supposed to prepare for something we haven't experienced and don't really understand?

Prepare? You've gotta be kidding me.

But wait a minute. I can hope for peace: real hope---the kind that puts feet to wishes, and real peace---the kind that surpasses the absence of discord to become wholeness and wellness lived out in whole and well community. And I can listen for the call of life on my life: what is it that calls out my gifts and passions, and who is it that needs the time and efforts I'm capable of? I can share my story with people who want to hear---a love story still in the making of brokenness and healing and pain and joy, and how the God whose best name is Love whispers keeping-on words to me, enough to share.

I can do these things; and you can, too. And in the doing, we may just find we are visited by God born in us, among us, like us. And in the doing, and in the visiting, we may be made whole.

It's a baby. And we prepared the way of the Lord.