Where is Christ in your life?

Interesting that the Luke passage calls us to preparation, and indeed, this is a theme of the second week of Advent as we prepare for the birth of Christ. So while we are making all the seasonal preparations for Christmas--buying a Christmas tree, baking goodies, indangering life and limb on a ladder hanging Christmas lights--we know we also need to be preparing spiritually for Christ's coming as we examine our lives and repent of sin.

Yet Malachi does not say anything about preparing for the Lord's visitation to the temple. He just says he is coming. There is really nothing we can do to prepare for this advent; it's just going to happen, maybe at the most unexpected time. He then leaves us with that haunting question, Who can endure his coming?

Pearing back at Malachi through the testimony of the early church, I wonder if a faithful interpretion of this text can be that Christ's presence is active in your life right now but maybe not where you most hope for it. We usually identify Christ's presence with a warm, encouraging feeling we have when we sing a favorite song in worship or when a prayer is answered or when everything seems to be going right and we feel blessed. But maybe Christ is most present in our struggles and pain. Maybe that is where the important work of re-forming us more fully into the image of Christ is taking place. This is the work of purification (refiner's fire) and cleansing (fullers' soap). It is not a pretty process, but by this process we are transformed, healed and liberated.

The Apostle Paul understood this process. He could say I am most strong where I am weak, so I glorify in my weakness, because Christ's strength is made perfect in my weakness. The writer Flannery O'Connor expressed it, I believe, in the intoduction to the second edition of Wiseblood, when she said something like--we are defined more by what we cannot do than what we can do. Friends, Christ is to be found in our limitations.

Where are those points of tension and struggle in your life presently? Could Christ be at work there? Can you endure his coming?