Hi Friends,

It’s been a healing Advent season for me, looking into the birth of Christ with the unique lens of Him lifting off spiritual anxiety.​

I have loved hearing from many of you, getting to know your stories, and the unique ways the Lord is meeting you and bringing you healing as well.

This is the last letter in this Advent series, and it’s message is this:

You don’t have to move on from the manger just yet.

God lived among us — a newborn baby, a child, a young man simply working with his hands, studying, going to sleep each night.

He is Emmanuel. God with us.

I know many of us have lived with a heaviness on our shoulders. Perhaps you’ve been taught the Bible, even good things, that came with a manufactured urgency.

Maybe you’ve sat under teaching where wholeheartedness was equated with overwork.

If you’re feeling harried and wind-blown by circumstances, or if you’re feeling waves of anxiety in your spiritual life, perhaps the manger is right where you need to camp out.

The church calendar moves us through the life of Christ in a 12 month sequence so we get a chance to see it all and stand in wonder. But if you feel like you need permission to slow down and stay at the manger for longer than Christmas week, here it is:

Jesus Himself didn’t move on so quickly. He didn’t skip over the newborn stage, didn’t bypass childhood. He lived it in real time.

Yes, the Incarnation happened at the speed of man. Your life is meant to be lived at the speed of man, too.

The world will move on. The pace of life’s treadmill will ratchet up in the next couple weeks.

But you don’t have to.

It’s here — taking in this face, these tiny fingers that are willingly dependent — here a pressure lifts from our hearts.

It’s here we exchange hurry, hurry, hurry for holy, holy, holy.

It’s here we tuck the meager blanket of our love around Him and see He eagerly receives it. It’s here that we see our ordinary lives are enough.

For Unto us — the heavy laden with anxiety running through our veins — a Child is born. Unto us a Son is given.

He’s come to free the captives, to bind up the hearts of the broken. He’s come to heal and to save. And yes, to lift off the heavy weight.

What good news. What great joy. Hallelujah.

– Anna

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