God With Us? Credo? Or Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.

I’m “reading” Miracles by C.S. Lewis – listening to it in audiobook form on my long morning pre-dawn walks.   Lewis refers to the Incarnation as “The Grand Miracle.”   Do you believe in miracles?  I have my doubts, but the book is nudging me off balance in that regard.  It is a book I had tried repeatedly to read, but seemed more tenaciously logical than I cared to be while reading it.  My repeated attempts to read the book came from my appreciation on C.S. Lewis and my doubt regarding miracles.   

When I was a kid, there was a female evangelist, Kathryn Kuhlman, who would open every program by looking intensely into the camera and saying “I believe in miracles…because I believe in God!”  Her intensity seemed manic to me, and from then on, “miracles” seemed, well, a little crazy.   Even Lewis candidly questions “how Mother Egaree Louise miraculously found her second best thimble by the aid of St. Anthony”. 

So here we are, looking at (and perhaps into) the scene of a baby in a manger, and we are asked to believe that God has come down to save us by becoming human.  Do we believe this “Grand Miracle”, really?

You may be one of those who responds with an emphatic YES or an equally emphatic NO!  Since I cannot sit with you and learn from you, and, frankly, test your reasons for my own consideration, I will rather turn to those of you who, like me, are unsure.

Perhaps “credo” – I believe – is not the only authentic response to the Christian Doctrine of the Incarnation.  Perhaps “perhaps” is a word that does justice to the human call to Faith.

Joseph was told not to divorce Mary, because she was with child by the Spirit of God.  I wonder if he acted on belief, or respect for the possibility.

“You won’t admit you love me, and so how am I ever to know” is the line of the song made popular by Nat King Cole, the song we know as “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.”  We were visiting our son in Spain, listening to the song sung by another American youth mimicking Cole’s poorly pronounces Spanish version: “Qui sas, qui sas, qui sas” which is translated to “Who knows, who knows, who knows?”

While Karen Armstrong let me rest with a God who is unknowable, Lewis awakens the seeker in me, alive with possibility.  To not know is not to be satisfied, indifferent...at least now when we look, yet again, at and perhaps into that scene of a little baby (God-baby?) in that manger.

Even as I walk in morning darkness and notice that the Christmas lights are coming down, I'm haunted by the possibility that it's really true.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps God really loves us that much.