By My Side

A woman, her arms full of shopping bags, fell face first on the busy sidewalk, knocking out her wind and sending the bags flying.  Holiday shoppers swarmed past, until a few noticed and formed a protective circle around her.

“Are you alright?” asked one.

“Can I help you up.”

“Do you need me to call someone?”

The woman shook her head.   “Maybe we need to call an ambulance,” someone said. Again, the woman signaled, “no.”

The people looked at one another, feeling helpless, waiting for they weren’t sure what.

Finally, a young man emerged from the crowd, set down his bags and lowered himself to the pavement beside the woman who was still collapsed on the hard cement. He said nothing; simply sat beside her. Finally, the woman turned to him, smiled and whispered, “Thank you.  I just wanted someone to wait with me until I felt ready to get up.”

In a way, this is a Christmas story. A story about a god who time and again, called to people through prophets and teachers.  People who were consumed with despair, broken and hurting, who had fallen on a path of pain.  For hundreds of years, they had listened to promises like this one from Isaiah: “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles,” if they renounced their “foolish ways.” Promises, promises.

Well, maybe they didn’t want to be lifted up like eagles.  Maybe what they wanted was for God to be down with them in the muck and the dust of living.  And maybe at last God heard their voices and decided to shrug off an immortal cloak and come find out what a human life was all about.  Maybe all the people wanted was for God to be with them, in their pain and sorrow as well as their days of joy.

And so one day it happened that a man appeared in their community, a man who walked beside them, a man who showed them how to live with love for each other.  And because he too experienced the heartache and disappointment that comes to everyone sooner or later, he knew about loneliness and disappointment.  Thus, If Jesus was a savior, as millions so believe, then to my mind, his willingness to be with all who suffer, without judgment or impatience, is the way he saves.

Almost everyone I know has experienced times when getting up seems practically impossible.  Maybe not literally getting out of bed in the morning, although that too; just getting up the energy or the will or the desire to “keep on keepin’ on.”

Days of gloom that match the weather, dark afternoons that match a blue mood. Drizzle and drear inside and out. While grieving the death of a friend or mourning a world that seems to have disappeared. At those times, we crave someone by our side. Someone who understands that when there is no fix, they will be present for us until we too feel ready to get up.