It was Thursday before Christmas. I needed to squeeze in writing a sermon for Christmas eve somewhere in between cooking several meals for pending parties, getting ready to go camping, putting together a few worship services, choir practice, a birthday party, a concert, the Roberts family Christmas extravaganza and dinner with friends whose son, a recent air force recruit, surprised them for Christmas…so of course, there is only one night before he leaves that we can see him, a couple of gifts I put off getting and then it occurred to me. I haven’t left any room for the story to create space in me.

I didn’t leave any room to reflect, to pray, to receive what God might have in store. I sat down to write and with everything whirling in my head thinking, “How am I going to squeeze in writing a sermon”.  Maybe you’ve been asking, “How am I going to squeeze in” whatever it is. It was at that point my eyes were opened to the irony of my circumstance. I sat down to write about making room and I had embodied a very different reality, up to that point. It was and is a circumstance entirely of my own making.

That is often the case. It is a circumstance of our own making, having too much in our lives that doesn’t serve us and doesn’t serve God. It is now Christmas Eve morning. This is what I did to get here. I decided to forget “The List” except for writing, except for making space INSIDE where there is infinite time. The space inside is where God’s creative movement intersects with my living.

It is Christmas Eve morning and “The List” is not completely finished. However, my sense of peace is infinitely larger than it was. The sermon is done having been mostly finished once I decided to drop “the list”. I am in a space of exuberant calm, enjoying the time that is passing and filled with a nice breakfast with family and a few more preparations with the help of family.

Whatever your “list” is today, I encourage you to set it aside for even just a short time and find the space inside where God already is, waiting to meet you in the spaciousness of eternity being born tonight in the one we call Christ.