Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Seeing Him

Sunday I read Truman Capote's A Christmas Story.  It comes closer than any fiction I know to capturing the significance of the Incarnation, God becoming flesh.  Capote tells how as a 7 year old he made Christmas preparations with his friend, who was "sixty something, though still a child."  Near the end of the story, as they lie in the grass, watching their kites cavort in the sky, she exclaims,
"I've always thought that a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord.  And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark.  And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling.  But I'll wager it never happens.  I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself.  That things as they are, just what they've always seen, was seeing Him.  As for me I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

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