On the Stable Wall

I recently took my teenaged son on his first college campus visit. (I know. Believe me, I could hardly get my head around it myself.) We had a great time together, actually, and we loved the school, but if you know my son, you'll already know that the last thing he wanted was a lot of individual attention. So instead of scheduling a personal visit, we chose to attend an official campus visit day, along with hundreds of other prospective students. This meant traipsing around for a day and half, attempting to keep up with a whole pack of excited, exhausted teenagers and their enthusiastic student guides, as they attended classes, department open houses, Q&A breakfasts, all-campus guest lectures, and residence hall events.

Frankly, I am just too old for all that kind of nonsense.

But my son needs to develop independence, right? To learn how to competently navigate and direct his own educational experience! After all, I'm not going to come to college with him. It's for his benefit that I skip some of those things in favor of a stroll over to the union coffee shop, or a comfy seat in the library. Or at least just sneak out repeatedly to look for a bathroom. (Hey, I already said, I am old!)

It was on one of these covert excursions, while the other students and parents were being herded off to some lecture hall or other, that I found myself in the most depressing, most institutional, most typical college bathroom of the trip. You know the type--outdated tile and fixtures, lots of stray paper towels, the flickering lights reminiscent of Tom Hanks' office in Joe vs. the Volcano. And it was there, on one of the graffiti-covered walls inside a stall, that I encountered the following message: "You are loved. You are chosen."

Today, as we celebrate the holiday, for many of us, our thoughts will turn to the true meaning of Christmas. Nothing, to me, conveys it more purely than this. Our lives are filled with both joy and pain. We live in a world of brokenness. The struggle is real. Every day, we are bombarded with messages from every side, pressing us with their urgency, persuading us of their truth, exhorting us of their importance. "You are not this. You are not that. You must have more, do more. Work harder, be smarter, do better, because there is only you. And you are never enough." But the God of the universe came to us, not in the trappings of state, or even the everyday surroundings of the store or the street, but in the grime and squalor of the stable. By no accident, in the place where things were least inspiring, most gritty, least triumphant, most real, he entered our world with only this message, the same one he has for us today--"You are loved. You are chosen." The writing on the stable wall is the only thing that matters. Today, as every day, you are the Beloved. Not just in your triumph, but in the place where things are most bleak. In a setting knowingly, decisively devoid of splendor, you are the treasure he comes to seek. Wherever you are, even in the grime, the waste, the graffiti, let his message break through.

You are loved.
You are sought after.
You are chosen.
Merry Christmas.