God's Presence this Christmas...

My devotional readings are in The Ragamuffin Gospel and Watch for the Light this season. This quote in Ragamuffin spoke to my heart as I prayed for a heart that more clearly hears and sees God at work this Advent.

For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get message through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think the miracle that we really get.

from Frederick Buechner's The Magnificent Defeat (quoted in The Ragamuffin Gospel


If I were to get it into words, I don't think I could have said it any better. "The best gift is His Presence..."

How silently, how silently
The wondrous Gift is giv'n!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heav'n.
No ear may his His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
Phillips Brooks - O Little Town of Bethehem