Shared Experience.

Holy adrenaline firing.

"It was so bright! I was scared and drawn at the same time."

"I know. I was freaking out. It was so dark and then it was so light. I was like...what is happening?"

"Can you believe this? This happened to us! This really happened to us. It went from being pitch black night to the brightest light I have ever seen. I didn't know if we should run or lay down or what. They were everywhere. You couldn't even see sky. It was just them everywhere. You could only see them. It was so wild. I still can't believe this happened to us."

"We won't sleep for days. I think we're just going to be looking up to see if it happens again. What just happened? I can't take this all in. I'll be sad if it doesn't happen again. Please let it happen again."

"Oh God you are so good, you so are so amazing. I can't believe that you would let us see this baby! Us! Thank you God, thank you. You are amazing. I can't believe that this happened to us. Thank you."

"God, I will never be the same again. I can't get over how powerful you are. You are so powerful, so radiant. We worship You. My heart won't stop racing. I want to see you."

"We saw You."

"We saw You."

"Yes. "

"We saw You."

__________

I sat with Lea and our friend Abi on Saturday night around Story Table. We ate pizza and talked about what it could have been like for the shepherds. Think about a time that you experienced something with someone else that was crazy amazing. Change your life kind of amazing. The exhilaration. The joy. Perhaps the adrenaline. The fear even. Whatever it was that you experienced, there is that timeframe right after the event has taken place and you are still riding the high of whatever your response has been to it and you just can't get over it. It's like you're having to talk out loud what just happened to talk it through for it to register that it actually took place. Your adrenaline is subsiding, but you are still living in this ecstatic state of joy and wonder in this shared experience. It wouldn't be the same if it happened to you alone. As you walk along or sit with whomever you shared the moments with, you can't stop talking back and forth to each other about the details. A moment of silence is filled with another description of what happened or how you felt and you might even repeat the same thing over again multiple times as you help yourself to realize it was actually real. You can't stop talking. You laugh. In between people giving their play by play of what happened, you pause to cry in release of how amazing the experience has been. You don't want whatever has happened to stop. You don't want it to end. You want more. More.

I can't begin to imagine what those night moments for the shepherds were like when their dark was invaded by myriads of angels, angels are far as the eye could see. And they are carried along by the words spoken to them in their beautiful terror that night. The angels left them. They must have been buzzing with adrenaline. And they go to see the Christ that has been born to them.

"Born to us?"

Bending down on their knees.

"Really, born to us?"

"Born to you."

There are whispers in my heart ears of nights that I didn't want to end. Lingering with Lea at the end of a day cultivating outside at Beacon Hall as dusk comes, not wanting to release the intimacy of the day of cultivation with her. Holy moments in the middle of the night at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center 25 years ago this week when Trent arrived into our life. Our family together with Taylor and friends on the back side of the mountain at Waffle House around midnight on a night that Taylor and his friend Esther sang their hearts out at Mountain Affair. Staring at Trey and Jonathan as evening came and they sat in the middle of the field after the state tournament was theirs. I didn't see a great company of heavenly host on any of those nights. I was keenly aware of the pull to not miss the moment. I was aware that there was a deeper whisper pointing my heart to something more.

I think the shepherds must have been blown away. Staggering power, love and fear mingled together in one shared experience that forever changed their life. Lea, Abi and I wondered about getting to talk to the shepherds one day and listening to them recount the in eternity. It is a story of eternity.

There is a shared experience coming, I believe, that will be like no other. We'll never recover from it. We won't have to. We won't want to.

Pause in the latter days of Advent to wonder about it........

There's more.