Love across the miles....coast to coast or continent to continent....whether it's cards or packages or Facebook messages, we know we can send love, compassion, mercy as far as it needs to go. Coast to coast and continent to continent, we can rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Love has no limits on it of time or space or years. Love knows the roads to travel to go where it needs to go, whether those roads cross countrysides, or bridges over water, or are plane routes through air, or are spiritual roads that link heart to heart. Love can cross infinite miles - and will always arrive on time.
Joseph and Mary traveled hard roads to get to Bethlehem, carrying Love with them, and they reached a stable on time for Jesus to be born.
Jesus traveled a hard road to Jerusalem to die, and after his death but before his mother and followers could sink into a dark despair too deep to rise from, he rose from the dead to give them and us hope. Jesus traveled the road to death first - and showed us that Death will never conquer Love: Love arrived for us, right on time.
In our hearts live the spiritual roads we travel to come home to God. Hard roads, some of them, that lead us through sickness, grief, separation, death. But we never travel alone. God lives in our hearts to walk those roads with us, those infinite roads, to make them places of springs even in deserts, to flood those roads with light even when they lead through darkness, to keep us warmed by Love even when we travel through bone-chilling, heart-chilling snows. God gives us inner serenity to uplift our spirits because God promises that, wherever those roads lead us, eventually they will lead us all home.
After all, we're God's everlasting Gifts TO God! We each travel individual roads to reach God, gift packages decorated as differently as packages can be decorated - elegant or whimsical, color-coordinated or patchwork - sent by land, water, or air - but all traveling to the same Final Destination. And since Love sends us, we will all arrive on time.
Driving up to the Post Office this morning, I saw people with one thought on their minds: to deliver Love on time, whichever route it had to take. May we always, as Gifts, take the right routes, the right roads, not veering away from the ones which take us where we're afraid to go, not growing angry because a road would lead us among strangers, not giving up because the terrain we travel is harsh or too mountainous. We have to believe that we're truly Gifts, that we're meant to deliver Love On Time wherever God sends us. Our Final Destination is the same for all of us, but we travel different roads to deliver Love to different people, Love meant to arrive On Time if we say "yes" as Mary said "yes."
Love on time for the sick, the dying in Hospice, the abandoned child, the confused, the despairing. Love on time for the stranger, the refugee, the homeless.
Just imagine our first Christmas, once we arrive at our Final Destination! Imagine kneeling in front of the manger, melted by that intense Light - that consuming Fire, that Morning Star, with chubby hands and a milk-stained mouth. Imagine His Mother thanking you for having the courage to say "yes," as she did, to all the meandering, sometimes frightening roads of your life. Imagine the Father gently unwrapping you, peeling off all those layers of doubt, fear, sins and mistakes, almost-deadly wounds, peeling off all that outer wrapping until you are revealed for who you are. You look at your soul, that crystal palace on fire with the indwelling Spirit, too beautiful to behold, and you fall on your knees in amazement.
"You really did make me an everlasting Gift to You!" You cry out.
"You chose to travel the right roads," your father softly replies. "You made sure that Love arrived On Time."