George Moments

My favorite Christmas movie is: It’s a Wonderful Life. George is on track to have it all. Fast-forward 15 years and you find him buckling under the weight of financial and relational stress. He attempts every obvious resolution until he hits a wall of hopelessness. All in the midst of the most wonderful time of the year.

George moments happen when you’ve worked the Rubik’s cube of life until the colors peel and you hit a wall. Or when you feel everything but good Christmas cheer at the prospect of an empty house or a room full of people who want to love each other but are struggling to navigate around the elephants.

In It’s a Wonderful Life God broke through George’s story with an angel who helped him see a deeper storyline; an invitation to hope in something beyond his ability to master the Rubik’s cube.

In the same way God wants to break through our stories.

One of my favorite examples of this is in John chapter 4 when Jesus met the Samaritan woman. Five failed marriages. She is a perfect George. You can only imagine what her neighbors thought of her. You can piece it together when you see that she’s willing to risk heat and danger to trek out to the well during a time of day when no one else will be there. How startled she must have been to encounter Christ.

A man. A Jewish rabbi would never have struck up a conversation with a Samaritan woman. In fact Jews often bypassed Samaria entirely. But Christ broke every social norm to break through her storyline.

She was focused on one face of her Rubik’s cube and would have been satisfied with a practical solution – give me water so I no longer have to walk this journey of shame and hopelessness. I can’t see a way out and I feel alone.

Can you relate? I sure can.

You know what?! Christ met her. He heard her. He saw her needs. He gently pried the Rubik’s cube from her death grip in order to introduce her to satisfying hope.

These past few months you’ve read about some of our George moments and how God brought hope to us. How God:

• Met Kallie on the side of a mountain

• Met Alyssa in a house fire

• Met me on a hospital bed

We’ve also had an opportunity to read about some of yours.

I’ve appreciated the process of remembering how God met us in our George moments. They help me remember His character. Remember that I can trust Him. Remember that he hears me. Remember that he will meet me even when I can’t see around the corner of my circumstances. Remember why I can close my eyes and say Amen.

And that’s what I want to do (what I NEED to do) when it’s the middle of December and I’m feeling stretched thin – close my eyes and whisper amen.

Because amen is my thank you to the One who breaks through our George moments.

– Laura