The Day God Finds Us

Thursday, December 25, 2025

For two decades now I have written on a blog somewhere.  I always write on Christmas day, and almost no one reads.  Consumed with family and friends, presents and meals, and faith – Christmas is just not a day that most people read, and especially not the internet.  They’ll read “The Night Before Christmas” or Dickens, or the Bible, but blogs, rightfully, just are not Christmas fodder.  But sometimes they read on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas for those not attuned to British tradition.)  It is always hard to know what to write on Christmas.

Many times I have written about the infinite becoming finite – the deep miracle of Christmas.  But that is the mathematician in me, concepts of infinity are only vaguely accessible to most people.  I have written about the church’s call to live up to the miracle.  And often I quote one of the most important verses of scripture I know, John 1:14 – “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us….”

That’s a powerful verse, easily quoted, immensely difficult to fully comprehend.  But I think I took a step closer to full comprehension today.  This morning in my inbox landed a piece in The Free Press by Martin Shaw about his faith journey.  The piece was subtitled:

When I decided to spend 101 days walking into a forest, it wasn’t God I was seeking. And yet he found me.

It is a story of a very mystical experience, ending up with Shaw, unsurprisingly, in an Orthodox church.  Orthodoxy is, after all, the most mystical expression of Christianity.  My approach to faith is not nearly so mystical most days.  But there are times.  And as I thought about it, most serious Christians I know can report at least one mystical experience of some sort.  And all of those experiences can be summed up in the sentence, “God found me.”

Do you see the connection?  God in flesh living with us and God finding us?  They are the same.  Christmas is God finding us.

That’s what we celebrate today – God finding us.  Be found.