Advent II: The Door

It was a definitive moment. The soon-to-be-grown-up daughter exited her room, shut the door, and looked at her mother and said: “I can’t do it anymore.” With further discussion, the mother learned her daughter meant she could no longer live in her make believe world. Her time playing with dolls had come to an end, playing house was a thing of the past, and dressing up as a princess was over as well. In other words, she could no longer live in a world of magic, wonder, and mystery.

It was a sudden, dramatic declaration, but I suppose each of us has reached such a moment when we, too, have walked away from magic, wonder, and mystery into a world of fact, logic and reason (also referred to as “the real world"). The door from fanciful childhood dreams into the sensible thinking of adulthood was open to us all at some point, and, in one way or another, we went through, closed the door, and walked down the hall, leaving the deepest longing of our hearts behind.

And why not? Life is hard and challenges us in countless ways, leaving no time for dreams. Life is not as simple as we once hoped, our simplistic black and white world becomes a confusing, often unfair, grey. Life’s limits bring our optimistic horizons closer, and we’re left wondering if this is all there is to life? Faced with such a world, it’s no wonder we pull the door closed.

This season, however, offers the invitation to open the door once again. It speaks of a world beyond our imagination, one where angels sing, shepherds kneel, and wise men offer gifts. It is not a story that denies the grey of life, but enters the grey with the primary colors of childhood in ways we will never fully understand.

Emmanuel, God with us, is a promise that seems too good to be true. It’s like magic lighting darkness with a star, like wonder being wrapped in swaddling clothes, and mystery curling its finger as if to invite us down the hall to open the door once again.