Live (Laura Mvula)

I will take from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 

-Ezekial 36:26

This world can turn us to stone. Suffering, aggression, systems of injustice try to press the life out of us, even as we wait in the hope of God’s promises. There is a kind of numbness that sets in when we have taken too many hits, a cynicism that waits to rush in where our hope gets torn away, a kind of hardness that tells us, ‘hope is a prelude to disappointment, numbness is the way to survive, distance keeps you safe.’ And to some degree it is true.

We could stop, stop feeling, stop risking, stop hoping, stop fighting.

But today's song is an anthem to pressing on, to survival, singing:
There she waits looking for a savior

Someone to save her from her dying self

Always taking ten steps back and one step forward

She’s tired but she don’t stop.
Oh, oh, oh, she don’t stop, she don’t stop, she don’t stop.

But in the beautiful harmonies and soaring notes I hear more than just a message to survive. They stir my spirit not just to survive, but to LIVE. 

Active Advent waiting, hopeful resistance, shining on means, in the face of that which would destroy, we choose, again and again, to live. And to live fully, to embrace all that it is to be in this wide world. To resist the evil agendas of injustice, greed, fear that seek to steal away our humanity. To reject the lie that to be unaffected or impervious is best; instead we chose to be open to beauty, mystery, risk to the brokenness and suffering of others and so to the redemption that has been seeded into each of us.

There is a power, a light, a resistance in choosing, choosing our humanity, choosing to inhabit our life. In Advent, we live into the reality of our dying selves, knowing that weak and vulnerable, finite form is where the miracle of God’s Love chose to come and do it’s work.

The baby in the manger showed us the way of vulnerability, as God chose to fully inhabit humanness; the power of God's love as it shone through that fleshy, human life. On long, tiring journeys, meals shared with friends, in outburst of anger, conversations with enemies, hugs from children, a life lived fully in resistance to death. 

So may you hear our song singing to you today, don't stop being moved by the suffering of your neighbor, don't stop reaching out, don't stop singing, don't stop looking for the beauty among the brokenness, don't stop being willing to change, don't stop, don't stop...

Holy One, teach us, each day, how to truly LIVE. 

-Lindsey