Are You Sure You Want to Come Here?

It's Christmas Eve, Lord, and I want to ask you:

"Are you really sure you want to come here?"

His eyes meet mine without judgment, drawing honesty out of me:

"More than ever before, I look around and see doors closed to you. We love our wealth and our weapons. We're not willing to sacrifice for one another. We won't work together, not even to save people's lives. We celebrate killers, liars, and con artists. We scorn 'outsiders'. We just want power, and we'll burn up every good thing we have in order to get it...Where do you even fit in here?"

He listens as always, absorbs my heartbreak as always, unflappable as always:

"Sorry, I lost track...are we talking about 2021 in the USA, first century Judea, 1930's Germany...some other verse of the Rolling Stones song? Seriously, where's this coming from? Of course I don't fit in here. Of course there aren't doors open for me. I'm used to that; I don't need much of a gap to squeeze through, don't worry. I always find a way in, the last place anyone would expect."

He senses I'm still sulking: 

"You really think I haven't seen all this a thousand times before? You really think I don't know what I'm getting into?"

His hand is strong on my shoulder, but somehow not heavy.

"You really think you're the only person who thinks my mission is doomed? The only person here who gets it? The last one left? Eh, 'Elijah'?"

This breaks me into a short laugh. His smile reassures me, even though nothing has changed.

Then, dead serious:

"If you had any idea the number of hearts inclined to me all over this world...people who are free and who freely love, who have nothing here to keep them from me...people you'll know someday with me on the other side...oh, my friend, my brother...if you could see them, you would look right into the face of all this ugliness and not despair. In fact, you would love all those you are despising right now."

The gentleness of this piercing...

His love for me...his love for all those I'll never know here...his love for those I thought made his arrival here a hopeless cause...

Yes, Lord, please do come into this mess.

This mess that I would call "God-forsaken", except somehow you never forsake it.

I'll never understand why.

And I'll never stop being thankful.