Like the barren trees signals the transition from Autumn to Winter, midnight tonight will mark the end of the season of Advent and signal the joyous twelve day celebration that is Christmas. If you are thinking, “I thought Christmas was a day, December 25th?”, what did you think that song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was about? Anyway, this season of Advent has been an especially difficult and complicated one for me. I’m not really sure why this surprised me this year, complicated is kind of the whole point of the Advent season. Advent is about holding light and dark, good and bad, already and not yet, in tension with one another. Tension produces strength and stability — think resistance training or the high tension cables that keep towers standing in high winds. Tension also creates pain and exhaustion. Most of my Advent season has provided the latter and not the former. Now it’s time to celebrate. Now its time to focus on the arrival of God in such a strange way, as a little baby. This is the marriage of Advent and Christmas. God is at work, God is present, God is saving the world, even though there are so many days it can seem He isn’t (at work, present, or saving the world). The reason it looks this way to us is not because God isn’t doing those things, but because He isn’t doing those things in the ways or places we would assume God would (or should). Just as no one would naturally think to look for the King of kings, the Savior of the world, God with us, to be a baby in a manger in a stable, we often miss God’s presence and work because it doesn’t look like what we think it should.
This season of the year is a big deal to me. A big deal. So much healing, teaching, and joy come for me through this time of year. Most years I feel like I’ve survived the long grueling year with all of its challenges, obstacles, and injuries, and I crawl across the finish line as Thanksgiving begins and the cycle begins again, but now with a refreshed and renewed heart and a refocused mind. What I am about to say, I say now with literal tears in my eyes and shame in my heart. This year, all of that got derailed from day one by the birth of a little baby. I will make a long story short, because our third grandchild was born a month premature — she was due December 25th — the lives of the entire family were upended and had to be reshuffled and restructured to meet all the needs of all the family. The baby was in NICU, her mama was in a different hospital, the day before we were in another state, everything was turned into chaos in an instant, along with all of the elaborate plans I had made to celebrate Advent, and this knocked me to the canvas and I wasn’t sure I had it in me to get back up. I am still ashamed of this fact because it is the height (or perhaps depth is the better choice of word) of selfishness and ingratitude to focus on the gift you didn’t get “for Christmas” (all of my Advent plans), instead of the greatest gift that is ever given, the gift of life in the face of a little baby. Don’t misunderstand the point I’m trying to make, I rejoiced, wept and celebrated the birth of my granddaughter as much as I have for any of my grandchildren. Being grateful for her was never a second thought, but when I wasn’t with her I was pouting because I was unable to attend the things I had planned to attend and do the things I’d planned to do. It was in the midst of this tension, ecstatic joy and crushing disappointment that God did His work.
Here is the lesson I learned this Advent: you can turn good things, Godly things, holy things, into idols that turn your heart from God rather than to God. I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming. I know that Israel took the brazen serpent on a staff that God used to heal them and turned it into an idol that had to be destroyed later (Nehushtan; cf. Numbers 21; 2 Kings 18). They took the ark that was given to allow them to dwell in the presence of God and turned it into an idol that had to be taken from them (1 Samuel 4). Years ago when God brought the discipline of fasting into my life, I almost turned it into an idol immediately, and would have but for the wisdom of God showing up to redirect me. Knowing all of this, somehow I ignorantly allowed what was intended to be a good thing drawing me closer to God and refining my faith of impurities, to become an idol. What good are spiritual disciplines if you allow them to make you a jerk?
By the grace of God, the Maker went to work — with an assist from Honey — and very soon, this disaster was averted and the Light began to shine in my darkness, and all because of the birth of a little baby, both past and present. This Advent season has proven to be the most spiritually beneficial despite the fact that it was probably my least “practiced/observed”. God is always present, He is always at work, and He is always saving, I was just looking in the wrong places and for the wrong things, so He went back to His playbook and used what worked before…a baby. By the way, He loves to do that, just look at all the themes that are replayed over and over and over again in the Bible stories we cherish the most (stories in/about: gardens, snakes, water, temples, wells, barren women, youngest sons, etc, etc, etc).
How does any of this fit in with the song mentioned in the title? Notice the lyrics:
You and I are complicated, an old and tender bruise,
Troubled waters separated, islands in the room.
You and I try to ignore this house of mirrors here,
Every glance and tone distorted year after year.
So I will swallow hard to say this—it might be a little rough—
If the world wants peace for Christmas, could it not begin with us?
How we love our indignation; how we nurse our pride.
Maybe we were both mistaken, or both justified.
Well this might be unexpected—a little clumsy and unplanned—
If not at a baby’s manger where else could I hold your hand?
Maybe you’re still angry. Maybe I’m offended.
Maybe in the arms of Jesus we’ll be mended.
Maybe love is bigger, maybe love is stronger,
Maybe just for Christmas, maybe longer.
Dear brother/sister, friend or enemy, family or stranger, if we want peace on earth, good will toward men, and joy to the world, we’ve got to do it. Could it not begin with us?
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