Special care baby

Baby Jesus gets special treatment at the hospital

Pills, painkillers, nasal sprays and bowls of steaming water have been my Advent companions for a week now.

Sometimes these things are spiritual lessons, sometimes random, but it is odd that I came back from a helpful spiritual direction session which boiled down to the subject of being (unless I am content 'being' and being loved in God, I cannot be an effective 'doer') and immediately I went down with tonsillitis. So I have been spectacularly 'doing' nothing ever since. Just trying to be comfortable with the being thing.

As a result I have been a marginally better patient than normal. I have been a slightly more 'patient' patient. Nearly. My mainstay has been Matthew's gospel and the Jesus who seeks solitude (e.g. on hearing John the Baptist has died) and appears to ignore need, or to say no to some requests (e.g. bizarre interaction with the Canaanite woman).

Along the way I have enjoyed taking part in the #adventbookclub discussions on Twitter https://twitter.com/search?src=typd&q=%23adventbookclub as various people read Maggi Dawn's Beginnings and Endings and comment on its biblical insights - so day 12 and 13, aptly, show Elijah's physical and mental collapse after the prophets of Baal encounter, and recollect that God is as interested in our physical and mental health as our spiritual endeavours: 'Knowing that at the moment of extreme weakness, not a sharp spiritual lesson but food, drink and sleep is enough to reduce any burnt out minister to tears' (p. 64). Yes.

In an Advent Study Group we heard a lovely anecdote about some nativity figures, brought out yearly at our local hospital. Christ with us, literally, Emmanuel on the work surface next to the packs of surgical gloves and other healing paraphernalia. One of our church family works there and had voiced her feeling that 'baby Jesus' should be kept out of the scene till Christmas day. He was duly removed. She went away, he was brought back out. She came back, he was reluctantly removed. Popular opinion won and he remained out, but in deference to her liturgical scruples, someone erected a little sign: 'Baby Jesus is premature'. Our church friend couldn't resist a comeback: she duly made the baby Jesus his own incubator (see photograph).

I had a baby in special care once, just for a night, not premature, but she did have a hole in the heart. All wired up inside a little breathing tent, I couldn't reach in to comfort her when she was crying, which just about broke my heart. You want to protect a baby, a baby is vulnerable. Even Emmanuel.


The more I 'be', the more I am discomforted by the Jesus who wasn't afraid of being vulnerable, who got upset, wept, withdrew, said no, got tired, got exposed to the difficult world, got killed. 

This Advent, waiting to get back to being active is proving a fruitful, if trying, time.

Why we all love the Military Wives

I was going to blog about comfort, from Isaiah 40:1-11, which will have been preached from many pulpits this morning. Then I thought, hey, who wants to hear about Isaiah when we could talk about THE MILITARY WIVES CHOIR (no disrespect to the honoured prophet...) This wonderful, inspiring and possibly unlikely group of women is a true 'zeitgeist' phenomenon touching a national nerve. Numbers at Remembrance this year were up so I guess it's not surprising that the waiting wives singing their hearts out to while away the lonely weeks till husbands return from Afghanistan was going to be a media hit, causing even the most heard hearted to reach for the tissue box as soon as their killer song Wherever You Are plays anywhere. It scores high on power to reduce us to snivelling wrecks - memorable tune; lyrics taken from real letters; the pure soaring voice of an unlikely tattooed soloist. Added to this is the power of gathered, single minded females expressing love in the face of danger, even death. In terms of Advent, it couldn't be more appropriate. Like the wives we wait for the return of the Beloved. In the meantime we need godly comfort, not like comfy slippers, but more the comfort of His own strength (com=with; fort=strength.) So Isaiah 40 - 'Comfort, O comfort my people' - got in there after all. Happy waiting.