With Us by Scott the Painter

Scott Erickson is a graphic artist from Portland, Oregon. He’s the guy who designed the image on my favorite T-shirt (one I wear at least once a week – it says Love Thy Haters). You can get prints of his work on shirts or hoodies or posters and other things at Society6. Be sure to check out his website too. He has just posted a series of three “With Us” images for Christmas on Instagram (images shown at the top of this post).

Here is the text that Scott wrote from the most recent image:

I love Christmas. I love the lights. The music (non-stop til the 25th!). I love any reason to party.

But this year it just feels empty. The world has always been chaotic… but after a divisive and exhausting election, images of innocent carnage in Aleppo, the overwhelming stream of information that mostly tells us that we’re all doomed… lights, tinsel, and Starbucks cups just don’t seem to matter. The aesthetics of safe shepherds, safe stables, safe and secure stars, angels, wise men, etc. just don’t make sense.

They don’t make sense in this world on the brink of fear and despair…

Vulnerability is scary. It’s a risk and it costs…

Everything about the coming of Yahweh in the form of a fragile baby is vulnerable. The powerlessness. The chaos of not having a sanitized place to birth. The shocking biology of it all. I’ve witnessed two births and both brought me to tears. It’s a beautiful experience… but not in any safe way. The water, the blood, the body fluids.

So much comes out when a baby is born. Sometimes the mother poops when a baby is born. Nobody puts that in their baby books…

Jesus was born just like us. In all of goopy humanity.

There is something overwhelming sacred this year for me to meditate on that. That he was born of blood… like we are. That he partook in the powerless vulnerability of coming into the world… like we feel. That he was born into the shit…. which we never seem to get out of…

Go Santa. Go presents. Go eggnog. Go all of it.

But for me the magic of Christmas this year is knowing that He’s always been in the shit with us. And still is. And always will be…

Merry Christmas.