Places of Beauty and Stillness

Inflict Thy promises with each

Occasion of distress.

That from our incoherence we

May learn to put our trust in Thee,

And brutal fact persuade us to

Adventure, Art, and Peace.

~W. H. Auden (Excerpt from “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”)

“Despite our stated beliefs in God’s trustworthiness, most of us do not seek out situations that push us beyond the limits of what we think we can handle on our own. We want the comfort of believing that God is there. But, in truth, we prefer our daily lives to consist of matters that we are quite capable of caring for by ourselves. We prefer to swim where we can touch the bottom. We like our dependence on God’s provisions to remain fairly abstract and cognitive. Fortunately, our lives have a way of taking us places we would not choose to go — often when it is least convenient and frequently when we least expect it. It is only in those moments that we have the opportunity to learn that God is more than the conclusion of an argument. God is a person who keeps his promises. God can be trusted. God will, in spite of ourselves, take us into a larger world and invite us into places of beauty and stillness that we could never have imagined.

If we truly want Christmas — and the Christ child — to come to us, we must first accept that it will not be on our own terms.”

~Shirley Mullen