Advent Devotions 2018

Third Sunday of Advent: A Family of Orphans

Posted by Windell Little on


We are all orphans.  We are all alone.  

I have often heard it said that, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there” (Job 1:21).  In the past, I have perceived this verse as a sad and lonely perspective on our existence. I no longer feel that way.

Instead, this commonality is a truth with which we can all connect and thereby bond over the clumsiness and fear with which we walk through our time here on earth. We can use our common origins to build
empathy for all of humanity, in contrast to our socialization and tribal nature, which encourage us to be separate. Sadly, we are conditioned to perceive in our primal minds that there is somehow less for US and OURS if we dare to secure enough for the OTHER.

Jesus’s birth was a signal to all that we are NOT alone, that beyond our fragile mortality is a higher way of being, and that this way of being and thinking can be practiced right here and now. There is no scarcity when love is the currency. There is only abundance when we remember that our fellow human beings are the same as us and we treat them with the respect and dignity we all deserve.

Let this Christmas be our reboot into the reality that Jesus messaged us so many millennia past: the love and compassion we must have toward each other. We are all orphans here and now, and this is the reason we must love each other. Let us not be simply a scared and aggressive species; let’s instead be a loving, compassionate, empathetic, and truth-seeking community of orphans, taking refuge in each other and in our considerably higher-leveled God who will always be there for us…if we will listen.

Peace On Earth to Us All.

 

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