Lately, I’ve been thinking about how two people often experience the same thing in vastly different ways.
In dramatic ways, we see this every news cycle as those within political silos of isolation receive vastly different information about what has happened and which is purposefully presented to provoke contrasting responses — and usually responses of fury and fear.
There’s also the matter of perspective. Our life experiences — and especially the ways we have been wounded by others — shape the way we interact with and anticipate events around us. What one who has always lived with privilege thinks of as no big deal might well be a very big deal to another who has always lived with prejudice or poverty.
But then there’s also our position relative to what is happening — how it affects us. It is this aspect that sparked this recent rumination as the snow days of the last weeks provoked very different responses among the children and the adults in my circles of life. Almost universally, the children received news of snow days with joy and excitement; almost universally, the adults received the same news with reluctant acceptance at best.
Exactly the same event happened. But our experience of it was vastly different because of how it affected us…… because of our position relative to what was happening.
We are now deep in Advent, with Christmas Day being here before most of us (adults) are ready for it — (another thing children experience differently). And as we look beyond the first coming of Christ to his second Advent, we anticipate a day that will not be experienced by all in the same way.
That’s why Isaiah can speak in one oracle about how horrible the coming Day of the Lord will be (cf. Isaiah 13:6, 9) and in another how joyful it will be (cf. Isaiah 25:9). These are not contradictions or descriptions of different “days of the Lord”; they are differing experiences of the same day based on the position of the person relative to what is happening.
God as Christ is coming into the world and to enforce justice (cf. Isaiah 11). His mission will not be different than during his first Advent: to “bring good news to the poor… release to the captives… recovery of sight to the blind… let the oppressed go free… proclaim jubilee…” (cf. Luke 4:18–19; Isaiah 61:1–2).
But the ways Jesus embodies his mission when he returns may be anticipated more clearly by his mother Mary, who in prophetic ecstasy named that he would “scatter the proud… bring down the powerful… lift up the lowly… fill the hungry with good things… and send the rich away empty” (cf. Luke 1:51-53).
See, it’s the same day, but some are going to be filled up and some are going to be emptied. Some are going to be lifted up, and some are going to be brought down. And maybe that can prompt us to ask: if Jesus came back this season, will I have more to gain in his return or will I have more to lose?
Remember, we’re all in this together,
Pastor Michael