Latitudes of what exactly?

Oh,  Annie. I love how you pull no punches. Thinking about this is light of Christmas and how abrupt the season just seemingly...ends after the presents are opened. Trees and decorations ripped down. Valentine's decorations already out at stores. Any and all evidence of the birth of Jesus ushered into boxes and tubs for the following year. It's over folks. In a way I get it. We started decorating for it months ago so it makes sense that we are ready for a change in decor. I think that's why I've always like the tradition of the 12 days of Christmas and keeping the tree up a little longer. Somehow it feels like we are sort of sitting with Jesus a little while after the presents are opened and just hanging out with him in the silence after the exciting part is over and all the party decorations are cleaned up. When I read this tonight though there was just something almost comedic about the way we as a culture pick up our tails and run anytime we actually stumble upon anything real, anything profound and mysterious and actually worth sticking around for. It gets uncomfortable, tense, and we are left in silence with a feeling of not knowing what will happen in the next moment and at a total loss of control. Thus...right on cue...what do we do when a beautiful opportunity for self-reflection, growth, and connection with the creator who aligned all space and time presents itself? Abandon ship and run away. Sigh. Same story, different chapter. 

Annie is not a Christian, but boy does she hit the nail on the head in describing how our culture cannot stand to lean into mystery, to sit in that tension and instead literally runs from it. We even do this in the church by shoving things we don't understand into little boxes, by trying to shove God into little boxes to make ourselves feel better instead of having to sit with the tension of how mysterious He is and how many things that we just won't ever be able to completely wrap our minds around. When you don't trust the author or even believe there is one that's a huge problem. The people in this story seem like they don't. I do. Had I been on that mountain I think I would have stayed there a long time. Actually, to be completely honest and knowing myself, I would have probably done something spontaneous and weird like pull out my blue tooth speaker and play music and dance or starting singing a hymn at the top of my lungs acapella . What WILL happen next? Isn't it exciting to wonder? To know come what may, the most trustworthy person and only completely trustworthy person for that matter that ever existed is in control of the narrative and that for those in Christ...the story WILL end in happily ever after? That all the fairytales ever written have always been trying and failing to tell the one true fairytale that rules them all? So why are we running? Why are we not sitting on the edge of our seat? Instead we "hurry for the latitudes of home". In this context "home" just means what we know, can control, and what is comfortable which might be home in the Thomas Kincade painting, but is not home in it's truest sense. Home as those who will know it with Christ one day seems to me like it would be so much closer to the majesty, splendor, and safety found on the top of God's mountain.