The Clocksmith

Life is full.

I'm sure we all feel that way come winter. Full in so many ways, gratitude, solitude, multitudes, food....it's all just filling. December always seems to be the time of year I pinpoint landmarks. I often find myself considering where I was 1, 5, 8 years ago, comparing and contrasting, mostly contrasting, my experiences, feelings and traditions against the years of yore. Perhaps more this year as I have faced the Holidays in a very new place of life. A very independent place of life. No longer am I on Christmas Vacation, home from school at my parents house. Nor am I in a season with in-laws and busyness. Christmas this year was quiet. It seemed to tip-toe in and whisk away without much to-do.

I've been pondering my quiet Christmas. Growing up, I didn't ever expect this. Christmas was always loud and jovial. And in college, it was very relaxing and restful and needed. As with everything in my life this year, I once again find myself in a Panera contemplating the newness.

As this first post-graduate year continues, I have continued to find two things to be true.

1) I will botch every single thing I ever do

2) In that reality, I will always find Jesus to be more than my lack. He fills the deficit and then some.

I don't say either of those things lightly. Wreckage of massive proportions follows me along, mistakes at work, insufficiency in relationships, withholding and fear with church. Guttural utterances of frustration come pretty regularly from me as well with some fat ole tears at my continued failure. However, in all of that I have also found the antithesis of myself. I have found Christ confirming that yes, I will screw it all up, but that was the expectation. His sufficiency will always propitiate my lack. That is both of us at our essence. He is not surprised by my failure. And that was why His birth was so staggering. My lack became familiar to Him. He understood the innate frailty of humanity, and not just in our sin, but in our lack of eternal nature, how kind of Him to take that on. We reek of finality and temporality and He welcomed that finite reality.

This temporality leads my hope-finding outside of me. A clock that doesn't work can not be fixed by another broken clock. The Clock-maker has to be the one to tighten the cogs and affix the hands correctly. A Time-keeper that understands both the nature of the clocks purpose as well as the component parts is the only one that can resolve the issue and cause the clock to work correctly. I am ridden in a cloak of finality and imperfection, which cannot mutually exclusively work cohesively to fix the brokenness of myself. But I don't feel concerned about leaving it to the Clocksmith. To create the entity is to really be the only one to fix it. I am to function accordingly. I do not mean to sound trite with this comparison, only to say that as I struggle with imperfections, with disappoint and frailties, as I am asking hard questions and experiencing tensions in my life, my job is only to walk accordingly. To ask and seek and understand that I don't see the full picture. I see the cause and effect of many small things. John Piper says, "God does ten thousand things in every deed. Perhaps we know a dozen. Maybe two. But not enough to judge before He's through". That's where I find my freedom. In knowing that I don't have to see the whole picture. My freedom is in my inability to understand. He is going to complete what He started because He started it. He's good that way.

That's what I think about Christmas this year. I am very incomplete. But He is the abundant Completer. God and sinner reconciled.