The world feels crazy to me, it is obvious.
People standing in line at the grocery store with their phones in their hands, barely acknowledging those around them. (I am too often one of those people, doing the very same thing.)
Social media tells me what to eat, what to wear, and where to shop. It tells me how to vote. It tells me people’s dark secrets. It tells me where to give my money. It tells me who to hate and who to love, and what to hate and what to love. It tells me fake news. It tells me what my friends are doing, and where I’ve been uninvited or left behind.
All of it obvious and readily accessible with just a quick click and few sliding scrolls.
The obvious is ever before me.
Most days I spend several hours sitting with clients and listening as they share with me stories from their life. They share the scenes and tell me what feels true, what feels apparent, what to them is obvious.
They were at fault.
They were stupid.
They were not good enough.
Things will never change.
The obvious conclusions are most often missing the presence of anything kind.
“How do I change, how can I get free? I just want to forget and move on.” Forgetting the obvious rarely works, it somehow seems to stay with us, taunting and haunting us for years to come.
My own story work has led me into many scenes from my life where I had come to obvious conclusions. A few weeks ago I told a familiar story, one I have spent significant time talking through in small groups and in counseling. The obvious conclusion I had left with as a ten year old, had been addressed years ago giving me a tremendous sense of freedom. So, obviously, there wouldn’t be anything significant to come from this telling of the story, which was more for “training” purposes for others. As those in the circle with me responded to what I shared a new truth emerged, a truth about the nature of hope and how in the midst of something that I have continued to hold as a such a dark story hope was there, flickering in the dark. I hadn’t been able to see it before, it was behind what was so obvious. I felt a sense of openness and release deeper within me as I spoke the words naming the presence of hope in the midst of that darkness.
Advent is a season that teaches us to wait for what is beyond the obvious. “It trains us to see what is behind the apparent. Advent makes us look for God in all those places we have, until now, ignored.” Joan Chittister
To see behind the apparent requires cognitive choice, intentionality, purpose and usually it requires the presence of others who you allow to edit and offer feedback. In that it requires the risk that comes with hoping. Maybe there is more. Maybe there is something of the incarnation to be seen, to be felt, to be known in places we have until now ignored.
Curiosity for what lays behind the obvious takes us out of our comfort zones, it stops what so easily dehumanizes another person, it invites us to embrace a posture of greater humility. I believe it is the realm where we most often find both our need for Jesus and experience his presence in unexpected ways.