God comes to us in rare moments

Life Lessons

December 16, 2009

By David Key Lake Oconee Breeze Wed Dec 16, 2009, 08:00 AM EST

The message of Christmas is that God intrudes upon the weak and the vulnerable, and this is precisely the message that we so often miss.

God does not come to that part of us that swaggers through life, confident in our self sufficiency. God leaves his treasure in the broken fragmented places of our life. God comes to us in those rare moments when we are able to transcend our own selfishness long enough to really care about another human being.

On the wall of the museum of the concentration camp at Dachau is a large and moving photograph of a mother and her little girl standing in line of a gas chamber. The child, who is walking in front of her mother, does not know where she is going. The mother, who walks behind, does know, but is helpless to stop the tragedy. In her helplessness she performs the only act of love left to her. She places her hands over her child’s eyes so she will at least not see the horror to come. When people come into the museum they do not whisk by this photo hurriedly. They pause. They almost feel the pain. And deep inside I think that they are all saying: “O God, don’t let that be all that there is.”

God hears those prayers and it is in just such situations of hopelessness and helplessness that God’s almighty power is born. It is there that God leaves his treasure. This is what happened at Christmas.

Wishing you much love and much light.

—The Rev. David W. Key, director of the Baptist Studies Program, is involved in recruitment, admissions, student life, counseling, placement, and development functions for Emory University's Candler School of Theology. He teaches in the Contextual Education program. He is the founding pastor of the Lake Oconee Community Church at Reynolds Plantation. Contact him at (404) 727-6350 or dkey@emory.edu. His

column appears weekly in this space.

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