Eternal Connection

Think about your beginnings - your earliest, earliest memories - and then try to remember YOU before that. Can you consciously remember the moment YOU became YOU? For that matter, even if you are facing death at this moment, you still have this inner sense that you'll somehow continue on in another form or in another dimension. It's a mystery that you might be able to explain scientifically . . . "when an egg and sperm unite, a human being is born . . . when the body ceases to function, a human being dies. . ." but your own personal reality is perceived in a different way. You've always been. Now there may be others who were there the day you were born, or who may be present at the end of your life - but you experience yourself as one who is eternal. Formed in the image of God, you are a spiritual being whose origins are connected to an eternal Creator.

Living as we do – confined to a body, to time and space – is a lot like a bird who suddenly flies into a tunnel, confined and unable to soar. Essentially, we slip into this life through a tunnel of flesh and bone, blood and nerves, where we remain until we find our way back out of the tunnel and into the open. When Jesus confined himself to this same tunnel with us, he brought a light with him. Unlike you and me, Christ never lost awareness of his divine identity, of his true self. The rest of us have lived in the tunnel and forgotten that we are sons and daughters of God.

There are times in our tunnel that the dark, damp places are terrifying. There are times when we look around and honestly believe this is all that there is. There are also times when we see markings on the tunnel walls of those who have gone before us and we learn, perhaps even turning back to help those who progress behind us in the tunnel. Nevertheless, for right now, that tunnel is all we know as "normal." And yet, we all push toward something beyond the tunnel. I think it's hope . . . desperate, desperate hope and longing for home.

I think the way most of us live resembles how I feel when I'm in a New York City subway trying to use my cell phone. The connection is either inconsistent or non-existent. To get a good connection, I will have to find a good signal. That's like our perpetual pushing - the spiritual pushing that has propelled us through the tunnel in search of mystery and hope. It implies that we instinctively know there is a signal somewhere. In our tunnel we bump around in the dark, lifting up our tiny little spiritual cell phones, hoping to catch a signal.

Love it or hate it, the world knows that right now, it's Christmas. This is the time Christians have designated to celebrate the moment that God entered the tunnel with us. Christ - the Light of the world - came to be our Light in this dark tunnel, showing us the way to reconnect with our eternal, sacred selves, created in the image of God - beings so shimmering, that God was willing to live in the tunnel with us for a season, so that we could discover true Light and follow Him beyond the tunnel.

"In him (Jesus) was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."John 1:4-5