@vent = when everything turns out differently

During Advent, I was part of an @vents community. Every day, someone else sends the members of the community thoughts, impulses, song or Bible texts for inspiration. Here are my thoughts for today.

Discover God

During Advent, we celebrate God coming into our world. Sometimes we have rather sweet images in our heads, full of glitter, candlelight, tinsel, warmth and light and confectionery. That's all part of it. But sometimes it is rougher than we think when God breaks into our world.

I have just bought a piece of Nina Hagen's autobiography as Audiobook heard. She tells how as a child she was driven by the question of whether God exists or not. Should she trust her clever foster father Wolf Bierman, who no longer wanted to believe in God's existence in the face of the world's suffering - or her simple aunt „Mussel“, for whom God was as real as the person sitting next to her? Nina wanted to find out. The only test of God's existence she could think of was to hurl the worst insults at God that she could think of - so that he simply had to react and show himself. She did it one evening - and was quite disappointed when the walls didn't even shake. But the next day she fell so badly from the balance beam that she broke her leg and only woke up in hospital.

She saw the plaster on her leg. It was as clear as day to her: „Plaster - God. God really casts...“ She was overjoyed. God had literally broken into her world and shown himself to her.

No, I don't believe that God always gives people who say a bad word about him a lesson. But I do believe that he likes to communicate with us in a way that we understand - and if it is a plaster cast that shows a child, as she can understand it...God really does plaster. A few decades were to pass before Nina Hagen's first experience of God turned into a faith that was lived with confidence...but a start had been made.

Seeing God in the unwanted

Back to Christmas. I have been moved by the story of Joseph over the last few months. He is drawn into God's story - as an uninvolved person in a way. Yesterday, little Sophia had an operation. She burst into her family unplanned. And was born with a cleft palate and other health problems to boot. Everything other than expected.
Coping with unplanned situations in life - and surviving them with God's help - that is true wisdom. Your father, Christoph Schalk, learnt a lot from the biblical Joseph when he wanted to learn how to deal with this unplanned situation. He too was thrown into an unplanned situation that was by no means intended. Joseph became a role model for dealing with ‚impossible situations‘ with confidence. He describes the art of saying ‚yes‘ to unplanned paths and making the best of them in the Quadro - Inspirational and Devotional book Developing wisdom, that has moved me a lot in recent weeks.

Just how impossible this is becomes clear to me when I read the entries of Joseph of Naza read. Jospeh tells his story. A piece every day. The unexpected and inexplicable pregnancy of his fiancée. Then, to top it all off, the census. The travelling preparations. The stress. All the things he didn't want....and yet.... planned by God to bring his plans with him, Joseph, and far beyond to fulfilment.

In every life, many things are unplanned and unwanted. Often also unwanted. Certainly not as hoped for. Some things are certainly simply coincidence or bad luck. But it could be that some of the things that happen are a piece of how God wants to break into the world, including our own world. Uncomfortable. Without sugar-coating. But in his own way. To show himself. So that we can see and understand HIM - in our own way.