A woman prayed in a temple in Jerusalem for the advent of a Deliverer. The aromas of sacrifices and incense carried on the breeze a reminder of the pregnant pause the Jews were experiencing in their worship at the time, and the oppressive atmosphere of a captive nation. She knew those around her cried for freedom from the tangible hold Rome had on Israel, but her heart knew the One to Come, Son of the Ageless One, would know the true Avenue of Liberty was one of inner understanding and peace, not the physical breaking of chains in a political sense. She had learned to go within. Learned to see with the eyes of her heart. Anna was already present in the kingdom when she and Simeon met a baby born in Bethlehem. The arrival of Jesus, Emmanuel, perfect representation of the Father in human manifestation was recognized, not because he wore a halo, but because Anna had been with the Father enough to see with His Faith Eyes, the Christ. When Love meets Love, uninhibited, there is a knowing.
There are many characters in the Christmas story, but Anna, and, Simeon, prophets whose eyes had been waiting to lay hold of the picture of humanity’s redemption, something obvious to them without witnessing his death, are on my mind this season. Their roles seem so small and insignificant, but they aren’t. They are the hint that before the subsequent events of life and death, Humanity was already delivered. We were about to find out how to move from being sanctified, to participating in our salvation. Waiting wasn’t wasted, but they knew the waiting was over. In Christ was the freedom and the power to live.
So why is this woman thinking about Anna? Because the freedom to live was already granted. Because Messiah has already come. Because my christian brothers and sisters are sitting immobilized in their own pregnant religious pause, fasting, and praying and… waiting, for their deliverer to come and set the world to rights. They are waiting for kingdom come, when the Kingdom of God is within them, waiting to be free to move, and set the world to rights through them. I am not talking about crusades and laws and picket lines, and social justice campaigns, though many of those causes are righteous. I am speaking of the manifestation of Love that sees only humans, not categories and walls. The fruit of the Spirit, against which there are no laws, bringing about the Peace of Christ.
I long to hear songs, hymns and spiritual songs… confession of sin to one another, leading to identity understood and defeated insecurity. We are seeing visions and dreaming dreams, but instead of rising up and moving with Spirit, we pray and wait. But freedom will not come thus… He who has ears to hear: “the Kingdom of God is: within you, at hand.” “You have everything you need for life and godliness.” “ You will do greater things than these.”
Who do we think these phrases were aimed at, the great cloud of witnesses we will some day join? No. The power to be who we are is within us in the ever present now. Sadly, however, they sit like gifts under a Christmas tree marked “unsafe in human hands unless opened in heaven.” Health, abundance, grace, sustenance, life, hope, peace, freedom… all derivatives of love, all our inheritance from the foundation of the world. We were not created lacking, we were created in the very mind of the Maker, who looked out through the eyes of those into whom he breathed his very spirit upon and called it GOOD.
Good. The default setting of humanity. Humans acting in a an inhumane fashion are functioning, not out of secure identity, but out of fear. If you take issue with this, and prefer to see the fall as a curse rather than a loss of spiritual awareness and true identity, I can understand. All around you are people behaving in reprehensible, selfish, uncaring ways. We are fluent, it seems, in the universal languages of rage and hate. Fear breeds more fear. But, Love. I ask you what happens when we demonstrate to someone previously without the companionship and healthy connection of relationship, Love. Children adopted later in life, toddlers in a rage, comforted and held. Abused and abandoned souls with validation of their pain and experience. My own angry heart when asked what I currently fear.
What happens to a person when we begin with Love and move out from there? This is the default setting of humanity. Our Maker, who does does change, declared it at our inception. Our choosing the religion of attempting to reach the One who is within us by externally chasing him in endless doing instead of being, has done our entire race a disservice. It has left us waiting for the Messiah who has already come to save us from our sin and despair, and reveal Life and Love to us, to do a repeat and grand reentrance of a world already given all it needs.
So pray… thankful, as children set to receive favour already granted, not beggars outside the gate. Because he is not just our Healing, but our Health. Not the path to peace, but Peace Himself, within us. Not the coming King, but the Kingdom within. Not love that will conquer all, But Love that has Finished it. Let us stop declaring undone what He has done. Set your own world right. Look within. Sit down inside and embrace the perfect manifestation of His many pleasant thoughts that you are. Revel in it. Enjoy it. Embrace not just the Christ, but your place in Him who holds all things together. Choose to see the One who has come, and stop waiting for later. The earth may not feel like home, but the Maker of the Universe is. So rest, enter your rest through the eyes of your mind. Let the mind of Christ dwell richly in you.
The way of Jesus was to point us to the Father, to do all the things we see the Father doing. I see my Father, owning all the cows, moving them from pasture to pasture. I see him providing for thousands from a few loaves and fish. I see him toppling strongholds and bringing freedom. I see him allowing Jesus to die because we couldn’t understand his love without it, and making him once again alive in Christ because that is our own identity and we needed a tangible example of an intangible reality. I see him healing the sick and oppressed and raising the dead. And in all of this, I never saw him wonder when he acted, in the person of Jesus, if doing these things were the will of the Father. Love seems to want to heal, and bring life abundant. In the present. Jesus never said to anyone: you’re going to be out of pain when you die, keep toughing it out slugger. No. He healed and restored, body, mind, and spirit. He redefined identity for those who had it wrong. In this we are joint heirs. Why then do we ask as those who have no hope? The kingdom of God is within us.
So why wait? Why not embrace this in the ever present now. This advent season, celebrate with Anna and Simeon, who looked in the face of the one who was to come, and now is… NOW IS. God with us. Emmanuel. Eternal One. God of the moment… There is no maybe later. We are met in the present by the I am, in whom we are. A reality we must choose to see.