photo by Randy Wright |
By this time of the year most of us have inundated by Christmas stuff. Shopping...cards...decorations. I see these houses with so many lights and do-dads that you can hardly get in the front door. I don’t think even Santa will be able to navigate through all those lights. Christmas is not presents nor cakes nor chestnuts roasting on an open fire or even family members coming from all over. Christmas is no even church services where we all go to enormous lengths to say: Ta-Dah to this holy time. I love all these things...but they aren’t the real Christmas.
Christmas is mystery at its heart. An angel coming to a sixteen-year-old
girl. A virgin of all people. A baby born in a barn to poor peasants. In
Bethlehem? Shepherds having their lives turned inside out. Wise Men from Iraq
or Afghanistan standing that windy starry night open-mouthed at what they saw.
It’s leaving that tired woman wiping that counter at the Waffle House a hundred
dollar bill. It’s standing by a piano in a nursing home and having a little
tiny woman who knows nobody or even where she is—singing clear and sure every
word of Silent Night. Christmas is mystery—never predictable. It is out of our
control and the wonder of it all just sneaks up on us.
It really is a partridge in a pear tree... and two turtledoves...
and three French hens... and golden rings... and swans...and jumping ladies and
lords. Crazy stuff.
I thought it was strange advice until Christmas Eve,
standing in the balcony of a crowded candle-lit church—my sermon in hand and
hoping none of the candles lining the pews would topple over or catch fire to
someone’s sleeve, worry that the Advent candles might not all burn—it all faded
away. Out of the silence a little boy in a choir robe moved down the long aisle
quietly singing: “This little light of mine...” And Christmas came. At the
center of it all was God.
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