Ann Voskamp recently wrote a book, "The Broken Way," and I've picked it up to read it the second time through. And there's a question she's sewed in my soul, and I need the fruition of this seed: can even the brokenness of today be miraculous? I've been praying for miracles, reviewing miracles, viewing Alder of the future as a miracle. But maybe I'm missing something. Maybe it's not just the victory that makes a miracle. Maybe the daily grind, the pain, the now is miracle?
"The magnificence of the empty tomb requires the anguish of the cross. Even the pain of the crucifixion is the miraculous: Emmanuel. God with us."
I wrote those lines a few days ago, then got a text from a friend later the same day. She'd been listening to a pod cast and texted me the lines, "The brutal doesn't break us because the beautiful sustains us." Beauty sustains us, yes, but I want to know if can I lean so far into this brutal that I bust it wide open? Can I puncture the brutal to its core, let beauty bleed all over this ugly? Make these two become one?
Isn't that the mystery of the Good News? Jesus on the cross. Those moments of agony, they aren't merely deleted or erased. They happened; they mattered. The ugly became mysteriously beautiful. Emmanuel transformed the hideous torture tool into a symbol we wear around our necks, hang on our walls, ash across our heads--the brutal and the beauty inextricably intertwined.
Emmanuel: God with us. With in the present tense.
I keep wondering what I'll look back and see when we're a year from now. What disheartens me most is the thought that these days didn't matter. That these are just stagnant, pained, purposeless. Time used to feel like a friend--the longer time passed the greater our chances for a healthy baby. Now time feels like the enemy--the longer time goes on the longer we're just waiting, the less likely it is that we'll ever arrive at the desired outcome. Time--our lives--wasted? Is this really so?
I can't accept that as truth; I need to believe that the agony we're living in, the waiting and uncertainty of it all, is every bit as victorious as whatever outcome we eventually reach. I need to remember that today matters. That today: Emmanuel. Today: miraculous.