Initially, I ran across this post at Easter – fully intending to come back and read it within week. It’s now June, but thankfully, today I stumbled on Ann Voskamp’s words once again and am working to unpack my experiences learning from her writing and adventure to the Church of the Nativity, Israel.

Ann Voskamp, a woman I highly admire and respect writes from the deep wells of her emotions and digs deep into her experiences as a mother, as a writer, and as a woman of God – all in satiating thankfulness and worship. Her words are an act of worship, and I’m inspired reading line by line:

Checkout Ann Voskamp’s full article here.

Ann Voskamp’s words: “We are saved from our hopelessness — because God came with infant fists and opened wide His hand to take the nail sharp edge of our sins.

Emmanuel, God is with us in our ache and He gave us more than explanations for all our messy brokenness —

God gave us an actual experience of Himself, because God knows explanations can be cold & Christ’s arms are warm.

When I walked slow up the stairs to the the sanctuary of the Church of the Nativity, the woman’s bucket was steaming straight up.

I had thought the sanctuary was empty.

Had absolutely no idea where everyone else was. I had lingered behind too long with God, awed?

I’d stood there quiet, waiting, before the stained glass brokenness of His birth, rising there above the altar. Waiting for God knows what.

Waiting for God.

He’d come. Here. He had literally come right here.

That’s when I saw her steam rising from a bucket. I had heard the slosh of the pail tipping over first, up near the altar. Then she had stepped out of the shadows with her mop.

And she’d began this slow choreography of grace across the floor. Of mopping up the mess down here because God came down here.

She looks like Mary, breaking her jar of nard and and letting her love run out, washing the feet of Jesus in the fragrance of her love.

She doesn’t have to be seen, she doesn’t have to be known — she’s mopping up the birthplace of God.

The music —

Where in the world is the music coming from? Haunting notes, high and lovely. From the dark? From behind the altar?

Her shoulders, her shoulders, are moving with the notes.

The music’s coming from her.

The music’s coming from within her.

She turns with her mop and the whole thing feels like I’ve walked in on her anointing Him and I kneel low — like I don’t want to interrupt? Don’t want to be seen? Like I am watching a singular act of worship and it’s brought me to my knees.

I am witnessing an incarnation — her humble act of service is incarnating her Lord. And something in me brims…. and spills.

This world won’t be changed by fame-lusters like it will be by faith-livers.

This world won’t be changed by the flashy like it will be by the lowly.

This world won’t be changed by more selfies like it will be by more self-sacrificing.

This world won’t be changed by more selfies like it will be by more self-sacrificing.

This busted-up, warring world will taste resurrection, not because of people stepping up in front of news cameras or spotlights or spout their soundbites — but because of people who step down into the shadows to be the light of Christ.

This bleeding, broken planet will taste healing not because more of us tried to climb ladders to be seen — but more of us went lower and saw the face of Christ in those who are too often unseen.

This spinning, scarred chunk of sod in the corner of the universe will taste shalom not because more people wanted to be crowned important — but because more of us have knelt at the feet of the One who is Important and we’ve got the dirt of His kingdom under our fingernails.

Hope rises up when there are people who are willing to descend and serve because God descended and gave.

Hope rises up when there are people who are willing to descend and serve because God descended and gave.

Hope rises up wherever people beat their power into plowshares, their microphones into mops, their ladders into life lines for the languishing and lost and hardly living.

Hope rises only when there are the courageous who are willing to go lower and incarnate Christ.

And here is this exquisite woman with her bent back and humble mop in the place where God first touched this sod, first let his loud cry mingle with humanity.

And I’m a kneeled mess and can’t stop weeping, my shoulders moving with the breaking of my heart over the beauty and rightness of her lowly offering right where He Himself came low and offered Himself.

The woman leans her mop up against a pew.

She steps in close toward me. And she cups my face in her wrinkled, warm hands.

And she gently kisses my one wet cheek — and on my other wet cheek.

There’s hope in our hells when we become like Jesus to each other.

I don’t understand the thickness of the foreign words she murmurs over me, but I know how this communion makes me feel, and she holds me up as my repentance breaks right open and falls like rain.

She’s like my Mary who kisses the unlikely with this fragrance of His love —

anointing me for my own going lower and dying.”