O Come, O Come Emmanuel

A number of people in my church believe that God may have called us all here for some reason, for some work that He wants us to accomplish. Perhaps His people everywhere have that feeling, or should--that they're called to the place where they live. But it seems even more evident here because our town offers so little in the way of enticement to people who come from other places. I don't mean that as a slight, but it's true--it's not the kind of place that draws outsiders. It has neither the cultural opportunities and great shopping of a big city, nor the charming downtown and trendy restaurants of a hip small town. As one of my colleagues recently put it in his dry and perceptive way, "Basically every restaurant downtown has the stench of death about it."

Maybe that's why this morning, as we sang "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," the song felt even more meaningful to me than ever before:

O come, o come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice, rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, o Israel!

I've always loved the heartbreaking solemnity of the song. It seems to illuminate Christ's birth not as the merry culmination of excited anticipation (like waiting for Santa), but rather as a rescue from an abiding and immeasurable grief, an otherwise-endless mourning.

And yet I don't feel exiled here, strangely enough--I feel at home. I feel at home in the way you feel when you are needed and appreciated for all those things that are most important to you and that you can give most easily. You feel like you're some little chime that has been passed from bell-choir to bell-choir sounding wrong or redundant, and now you've found the one that has been looking for your note. I don't know why this is, because there isn't anything that I'm doing at church or even at school that somebody else couldn't do--in fact, I've got another woman all trained on the media stuff now, so I'm totally replaceable--but there's something about the emotional connection. I'm talking about my connection to the church as an organization, an organism, rather than simply my friendships (which have bound me blessedly everywhere I've lived)--it makes a difference. Whatever function I have in the church, I feel as if it's my job to wait and work for the ransom of this place. And in that sense, it feels incomparably right to be in a place that in many ways is all wrong.