There are moments I want to stomp my feet and shout for everyone to just stop. There comes upon me this deep ache and feeling that I want more….that this is not what it is about. This is not what life is about. This is not it.

Stop.

I find that it happens a lot at this time of the year. The other day I wrote about Advent and about wanting to not be so impacted by the stress of the worldly holiday season. To be able to find that place of worship and wonder.

Wonder.

I want to be moved deeply. Not an emotional high, or an emotionally charged feeling of love or whatever.

I want to ache….to be so moved that it goes beyond the emotions and the intellect and there is something that makes me want to shout to everyone to stop and pay attention.

Luminarias can do it to me. Sunsets can. Worship in the congregation can. Communion can.  Art can. Music can.

The look of absolute trust from my children can.

The ache that affirms that all of this hoopla of Christmas is something grand and amazing and we need to stop and pay attention.

Not to the sales and the manic feeling of having to have it all right. Pay attention to the quiet under it all, to the whispers that this amazing grace is true and that this faith that I believe is more than fairy tale and wishful thinking.

“All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance of fading vapour from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago.” – Chesterton

Yes!  I want to be overwhelmed by wonder. And I want that deeply for my children. I want images to be formed in their minds and impressions to be made on their hearts that forms their imagination. That the absolute wonder and amazing fact that God became man would stop them in their tracks. That Christmas would not be dominated by thoughts of wish lists and toys, but that somehow in the midst of the twinkling lights and the celebration they would get it.

That this faith is real. That it changes everything. That God became one of us. That we would ache because we know that we just taste the edge of reality and we will one day see it clearly….and the wonder will be complete.