Maybe the word juxtaposition could be the introduction. All of us have little threads of being we don’t brag about in public. While I am not a mathematician, I do have a slight ripple of arithmetic and logic that comes to the fore only in geometry. especially forms that curve. Hence, creating Venn diagrams is a delight. The simplest definition is that those overlapping circles define a subset. Amidst disparity, some things are alike.
Just think. Choose any three items from your closet. Would your even best friend want them handed over? Walk into a party and delight in people you are pleased to see. Yet are the choices on the dessert table what you would choose to serve? You and a co-worker have to complete a project together and one sees a vision and another the problems. There is an inner circle where what is alike holds moments together. “Not that color, but you and I both love that style sweater.” ” I hate one bite tidbits; I only came because we always have the most interesting conversations.” “At the last moment, we were great at lobbing our idea back and forth for the presentation.”
I live in a neighborhood, a city, a state, a world. Each place holds those I know. A child at the Little Free Library, the checker at Kroger, a niece in Austin, a son’s friend in England. Part of any of our lives makes its own circle without them as does theirs without ours. Then, at this time of year, two subsets appear. A smaller less important one for Christmas, and for four weeks designated as Advent, we create a larger intersection based on the beginning of a liturgical year that matters to us. Everything this Venn contains leads us through a story to a baby promised in this verse. We share the waiting together.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6
Let Me Tell Ya 