That's the great and glorious plan

This morning was wonderful. My pains are few, or fewer. The temperature has just a tinge of cool, just the right portion, like Goldilocks was dialing it up. I sat outside, thinking, with a cup of coffee (pumpkin spice) filling the air with steamy smoke.

Again, I'm thinking, thinking. What ifs have come running through my mind so often that I've stopped (God God, I nearly wrote killed) a sermon series I was delivering because it just seemed so inappropriate, or at least my mind and heart weren't in it any longer.

Instead, I thought I would talk about what it actually means that God is with us. Sunday I basically adlibed a sermon, with drippings of thought from what had been prepared, because I just couldn't go through a Sunday without delving into what had happened on Friday.

I watched Adam Hamilton do a much better job of the same thing on video yesterday evening, and I suspect there were many such efforts across our country.

In the past week, I've had opportunity to talk to a few  persons who sought out someone to listen to them. A few weeks past, a person called to ask if we could talk about why he couldn't find happiness, and after two tries to hook up and failing, he quit calling.

My point is this, I guess. We are just a bunch of folks with regular woes and worries. We pray, but many of us don't expect that miracle to come racing around the mountain to us. I looked at the back of a church bulletin at one of my churches and my step-father-in-law, who died weeks ago, is still listed for prayer. Don't think it's gonna help that much now.

We talk, hoping someone will hear us. We seek, not really expecting to find. We find, but it's not the right find, and we go on up that old mountain of worry.

But sitting outside, with just the right tinge of cool, and a hot coffee for fuel, I thought about what it truly means to see the baby Jesus come into the world. A baby. That was God's great plan? A baby. Innocent, well, sure, but more than that, frail possibly, and certainly weak. That was the great plan.

He -- and we -- would come together, and the trial and the travails that would come would come, together. The morning pains of those over a certain age (and my memory doesn't allow me to remember what that certain age was) are just what it is. The lack of for many, many is what it is.

But through the whole dang thing, He is WITH us. Absolutely with us. Through the hallways and classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary, He walked. He walked to the school with the shooter. He walked in with the shooter. He walked the way He has always walked, allowing us to freedom that separates us from the animals, the freedom to choose.

And we, heck I, have the audacity to ask God where He was. He was. He is. I am.

That's the great and glorious plan. He is WITH us. He hurts, he cries, he needs...Yeah, the unneedable needs, us. He wants us. He wants our love, because that is the computer language He gets. Love.

It doesn't conquer. But it sure does heal.