This holiday season, I’ve carried a particular song with me more than in other years. The first time I heard “Now Behold the Lamb,” I was a fourteen year-old, recently baptized praise dancer trying to learn my first routine. There were maybe eight to ten of us girls who danced together – a few of us had solos during the verses, but mostly we danced in unison during the refrains. By the end of our first performance of that dance during church, I was in tears. I had not cried at all during practice, but something about the congregation’s response and the tears of some of my fellow dancers moved me.

Twenty-three years later, the tears still well up when I hear this song.

I have given some thought lately to new year’s resolutions, to goals and hopes and plans, as one does when a year is ending.

But as I’ve reflected on the largeness of this song in my memory and in my heart, I have wondered if maybe instead of looking forward, I need to look back.

Truly, America’s current political climate has had a hand in leading me down this mental road. How can we possibly be living amid a 21st century rise of anti-Semitism and anti-migrant sentiment? What answer can there be but that we have failed to remember from whence we came? Failed to remember who we are?

I wonder if it may benefit humankind to journey into our past to remember our common nature. At our core, we are relational beings who want to see and be seen, to care and be cared for, to love and be loved. Wouldn’t realizing this truth anew force us to see humanity in each other and act accordingly?

When I look back at my fourteen year-old self, stumbling over my words when an older congregant asked me why I cried near the end of our dance routine, I can help her answer him: I could see God’s grace so clearly, and see too that God’s incarnate grace came low in the full knowledge of who I am, who we are.

As 2020 nears, may we each find time to be still and remember who we are: first and foremost seeing and seen by a loving Creator. And may this bone-deep knowledge guide us forward in grace.