Today I fumble with excuses, mine, theirs, ours. They feel like gravel in my mouth and I repeat them, sure that repetition will make them more palatable.

We were not made for this, I finally land on. This, I know deep within me, is the only truthful excuse.

We were not made for this pain or this reminder. We were not built to be so resilient. We were not created to block these blows, holding out arms in defense. We were made for the shelter of wings and garden gates and fruit kept far away. We were made to endure pain like soldiers, but not for it. It is not the carefully prepared cuisine of our Maker--it is the result of sin and with every sin we creep closer to that which we were not created for.

What feels strained and strange, awkward and alien, is. I am a stranger and an alien and I am unaccustomed to the treatment of a mere mortal. I was created for So Much More.

It is this that I stop on tonight, sitting in the corner of a living room alive with carols from the baby grand and Christmas cookie leftovers. We are singing about angels bending low and midnight clears and we say these caviler words because it is Christmas and we do:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

But I am quiet here because I am hearing. It has been hard, doing that for which we are not created: sin and strife, suffering long, and at war with men; it has been hard living in two thousand years of wrong, rumbling so loudly we could not recognize a real love song if we tried.

I don't know what the angels think of us, those who haven't fallen to Lucifer's depths, those who spend their eternal existence in worship and light doing that which they were designed to do. I think they sing, but they also laugh at us mortals. I think they may mourn, too, and say, "Don't you know? Don't you know what you were designed to do? To spend your life doing?"

We weren't designed for this, I say back to them.

And so we lift our eyes, for two thousand years more, and listen, try to hear what comes upon a midnight clear. What comes so small, so discarded, so Holy. What comes to do what He was meant to do and does it fully. And so we wait for that day, that eternal day, when we will all wake from death and this constant pursuit of holiness.

And hear the angels sing.