Spinning

I was reading The Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp to prepare my heart for the Christmas season.  I read this paragraph, which sparked the following thoughts:

“The earth outside your window is tilted right now at just twenty-three degrees.  ….So the planet’s bulk of six sextillion tons (that’s twenty-one zeros) spins perfectly balanced on an invisible axis, spinning you around at one thousand miles an hour, nine million miles a year.  Hurtling you through space even right now in this sun orbit at nineteen miles per second, 600 million miles a year. You, held in this moment by this unseen belt of gravity and turning these pages slowly while the miracle happens all around you.”

I sat for a while and tried to picture this universe, this earth, tilted in space, tons of tons suspended in mid-air, spinning around itself and spinning around the sun.  While I can picture it and know it’s true, it doesn’t really connect to my day-to-day life.  The earth to me doesn’t seem to be spinning, it seems still.  And from my perspective it’s not tilted, it seems straight.  And most of the time it doesn’t even seem round, it feels pretty flat to me.  My perspective on earth doesn’t always match what I know to be scientifically true.

I know the earth revolves around the sun, but in my day-to-day life I think of the sun revolving around the earth.  I mean, why do we call it a sunrise or a sunset?  The sun doesn’t rise or set.  The sun is constant, stationary.  As the earth spins, the sun appears to go up and down in a day, but really the earth is just constantly turning right. 

From my kitchen window one morning I watched the sunrise.  I could just see the tip of the sun when I started watching; it was bright orange and just peeking over the trees.  And at that part of the day the sun seemed to be rising pretty fast.  Within 5 or 10 minutes it was a full circle above a tall building and shining more clearly and brightly.  While it appeared to me that the sun was rising over the earth, I know that really the earth was just continuing to spin east as it orbited the sun.  I picture the sun going up and down, around and around the earth, when really the sun stays still and we are the ones spinning around and around it.

Sometimes I think we live as if God revolves around us, rather than the other way around.  While in our heads we know that God is most important and that our lives should revolve around him, do we really live that way?   Our lives can seem so big and significant and urgent, and God can seem so small and far off and irrelevant.  From our perspective, we are central, our agenda is most vital, and our needs are the most important. 

While God does love us deeply and does care about the small details of our lives, we are not the center of the universe.  He does not revolve around us to fulfill our every wish and temporary desire like a genie in a bottle.  He is the center.  Our lives should revolve around him.  Our eyes should be fixed on him; our purpose and meaning should come from him.  We should order our lives around what he is doing, not make him fit into what we want to do.   He is the main character in this story.  This whole universe is God’s story, to give him glory, and yet so often our perspectives are skewed to think the story is all about us.

Am I so caught up in my work and my life that I am trying to force God to revolve around my life, rather than making my life revolve around Him?  Are my thoughts on God and focused on what he is doing, or are they on me and focused on what I am doing?  Am I calling Jesus my Lord, my center, my everything on Sunday, but then quickly re-focusing on my to-do list, on clothes and food and work and friends, the minute I step out the church door?  Or maybe my focus lasts for the day but what about Monday morning?  Am I still revolving around God then?  How about Friday night when I’m tired and worn?  Who is the center of my life at that hour?  Do I think I am the main character of the story or am I truly living like it’s all about and for God? 

In this Christmas season, during Advent, am I so caught up with the decorations, and the presents, and the preparations that I am trying to make Christmas revolve around my life, and me, rather than stopping and letting my life revolve around the quiet manger?

It’s so easy to get caught up in the bustle – both of Christmas and of life in general.  We get busy.  We get harried.  Our world spins and our lives spin with it and eventually we feel like we are spinning out of control.  But advent is about waiting.  Slowing.  Expecting.  Christmas is quiet, simple, incredible.  Are we missing the incredibleness of Jesus’ birth because of the extravagance?  Are we slowing our lives down, stopping the spinning, so we can sit quiet before the manger and gaze upon the Lord?  Are we like Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet, or like Martha, busy with the preparations (Luke 10:38-42)?  Which one is better?  Which one does Jesus desire?  We may think our spinning is for the Lord, but Christ wants us to slow down, to sit at his feet, and let our souls spin quietly in His love.

Let us slow the spinning in our lives, sit still before the manger of the sleeping Savior, and then slowly start to re-spin our lives around Him in the year to come.