I hope you kneel

I hope you kneel in broad daylight under the noonday sun on the moist Mother earth, feeling the wetness seep through your pants so the skin on your knees, indenting the ground with the weight of you, feels her soddenness. I hope you imagine kneeling teary before the Christ child, gazing at Emmanuel, softly cooing in his wooden cradle, all wide-eyed and guiltless; he takes the whole of you into his arriving presence.

I hope you kneel under the lesser light of the waxing moon on the rough mortar and brick until your knees feel the beginning torment of hardness underneath…no give at all, just pressure building toward a suffering of sorts. I hope you imagine kneeling under the wood now fashioned into a torture device, a cross where the child, now a man grown-up, cries out in pain, covered in blood, urine and spit; he takes the whole of you into his dying presence.

I hope your physical body is your reminder that because His perfect body was broken just for you, you will kneel and bow every day for 28 days during this year’s Advent Season as an offering of humility and a gesture of your servant heart, as a follower of the Way of enemy Love. I hope you’ll do this for a few minutes each day with the intention of sending compassion and hope to our nation’s leaders.  I hope you’ll kneel to be in solidarity with other members of the Body of Christ as an act of faith and reverence for the sacrifice made on your behalf with full confidence that miracles can and do still happen and those who are suffering need you to do at least this much..with your body, with your time, with your sacred pause.

Won’t you join me and spread the simple practice? I wonder what will happen in your heart as you kneel daily and do it in remembrance of your friend Jesus.

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