“This is the irrational season when love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason there’d have been no room for the child.”
-Madeline L’Engle-

(sculpture by Tom Ward)

Miracles are what many of us desire and seek. We are tempted to believe that if we could receive our own miracle, it would be our life’s panacea. But in Mary’s story, the astounding miracle of the virgin birth of the Messiah doesn’t fix her reality; it only serves to offer her a tiny glimpse of ultimate Glory.

His birth doesn’t repair these things because God doesn’t save the day, destroying all the bad guys Hollywood-style. He didn’t do that then and doesn’t do it now. He allows us to experience our world with all or most of its splendor as well as its horror, which is difficult for visionary beings to accept.

Maybe this is why Christmastime in our malls, streets, and living rooms has about as much to do with Christmas as a wax museum has to do with real life–it is inert, artificial, superficial, and incomplete.

Maybe this is why we sometimes spend the season stressed-out and busy selecting and purchasing products for people who don’t have any room to spare in their closets. Does avoiding the messiness of the Christmas story in some way help us avoid the messiness of our own lives and, consequently, their redemption?

I’ve heard that God is the ground of all reality. If that’s true, I wonder if Hope is the ground of Belief.
When things get so bad that joy is lost and we don’t know how to love and due to the turmoil in our souls peace feels like a fairytale–when things get so bad that we can’t quite believe, we can still hope.

Along with peace, joy, and love, this is a song about hope, because the opposites of these three precious
things–sadness, hate and violence–are in plentiful supply surrounding this amazing narrative. It’s our lamentable familiarity with this trio that makes the hope of Jesus’ birth so attractive and compelling. It’s our hope for the reality that God the Creator of all things is actually here with us.

THIS IS WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS

Unmarried and with Child, the hope of the whole world,
Came alive and kicking in the womb of this young Jewish girl.
She traveled on her journey; folks believed she was a liar.
This wasn’t what they’d pictured as the rise of their messiah.

Imagine how they looked at her. Do you think she felt like you?
Do you suppose she ever doubted God was coming through?

This is what Christmas means; not just miracles, but the in betweens.
It’s darkness where the light breaks through; and Jesus comes to me and you,
Enters in and intervenes. This is what Christmas means.

Endured the labor of her Lord in a dank and dirty place.
The family inn had no room for a whore’s disgrace.
They kept the law. They purified and then the prophet told:
The worst ain’t over yet. A sword will pierce your soul.

Imagine what they thought right then. Do you think they felt like you?
Do you suppose they ever wondered if he’d ever see them through?

This is what Christmas means; It’s not plastic pretty manger scenes.
It’s darkness where the light breaks through; and Jesus comes to me and you,
Enters in and intervenes. This is what Christmas means.

Brokenness is openness and openness is hope in this.
God does make his home in this; His home in this; His home in this

(music and lyrics written by Adam Kenyon)

This Is What Christmas Means

It is snowy out but not icy, darkening but not yet dark, and still in a 45mph zone the car in front of me is holding steady at 15. I have nothing to rush home to tonight, just some tea in a mug and some pages to turn in a book, yet as I accelerate and swoop ahead of this other driver I am starting to get a little huffy.

For several weeks now I have been waiting for something to happen. The specifics aren’t helpful to share; the point is that with all of my breath I have been waiting. Wishing. Wanting. Hoping. Praying that it would happen. And what I have been telling myself is that if this something were to come true it might possibly change my whole life for the better. The day would open up like a gift, and joy would arrive–enough to float on for a while.

But with each day that there’s no new news, I stomp a little harder on the gas pedal.

There is this crazy tendency I have–and maybe you have it too–to believe that joy is a single shining moment of happiness. That it’s the high peak on a line chart, the instant when everything comes together and adds up and is good. Something spectacular happens, and joy is the light, airy space afterward that fills up your lungs with dizziness and makes you grin like an idiot. So it is always the moment, or the next moment at least, that we are waiting for. When all of life aligns the way we want it to. Right?

But in stooping to peer under the rocky entrance of a Bethlehem stable, I find that my theory falls apart. Because here is Joy to the world: his skin red from birth, limbs flopped to his sides in newborn-sleep. Here is a mother–exhausted? A father–scared? Amid the chill of night, here is the stink of manure, the quiet chaos of new life. The unsettling hush of a place that is not home. Here is Joy: an infant in a feed trough, low enough for sheep to be curious and to knock him awake with their chins. Our Redeemer? At face value nothing aligns, and it doesn’t make a drop of sense.

Joy is not the froth and lightness we tend to long for and expect. Joy is an anchor; it is heavy. It falls into the coldest, deepest dark places, where the current and pressure are enough to crush bone, and it holds there. On the surface waves crash and roll, and we are not steady but we are held, and somehow that is beautifully enough. So when the soldier is not yet home, when the cure has not yet been found, when the loneliness hasn’t yet faded, there is Joy. When the hurt hasn’t yet seen its end, there is Joy. When we wait and wait and all for nothing because the happiness we’ve asked for doesn’t arrive, there is Joy. The Lord is come.

This hymn flies under most radars each Advent season, which is too bad.
It helps to capture the “already/not yet”-ness of Advent so well.
Come quickly indeed!

The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns

The King shall come when morning dawns
and light triumphant breaks;
when beauty gilds the eastern hills
and life to joy awakes.

Not, as of old, a little child,
to bear and fight and die,
but crowned with glory like the sun
that lights the morning sky.

The King shall come when morning dawns
and earth’s dark night is past;
O haste the rising of that morn,
the day that e’er shall last;

And let the endless bliss begin,
by weary saints foretold,
when right shall triumph over wrong,
and truth shall be extolled.

The King shall come when morning dawns
and light and beauty brings:
“Hail, Christ the Lord!” Thy people pray,
“Come quickly, King of kings.”
(early Greek hymn, translated by John Brownlie, 1907)

A man was heading home with his toddler child. They were returning from a long day of activity and busyness. Many things were weighing on the father’s mind. The vehicle was quiet, but the man’s mind was noisy with thought.

After some time, the child broke the heavy silence with a simple song.

Immediately upon recognizing what the child was singing, the man’s mind became clear and present. He at once realized that he was responsible for making this singing child. He’d created a creator and the sound of the child’s voice connected the man to the source of an immeasurable joy that could not be explained.

It occurred to the father–had he heard a master vocalist perform the same piece of music, flawlessly and with all the skill, tone, and dynamics of a Pavarotti, he would’ve been unmoved. A singer with an accurate execution, expertise, and emotional delivery could never have pleased him nearly as much as the soft, undeveloped voice of this youngster. The song sang “perfectly” would have lacked all its meaning.

This was because the tender little creature sang without pride or self-consciousness, thoughtfully and happily with focus and purity. It was not a performance, not intended for an audience. This child, whom the father loved, sang without being asked, without fear of judgment and with no concept or expectation of recognition or reward. Merely expressing a heart-filled wonder, the child sang for no reason other than it was what the child was

m o v e d

to do at that moment. For this reason, it was a resounding and powerful voice that resonated as flawless with the father.

Flawless. Even though the child had a weak vocabulary–many of the words were barely discernable–and conjoined with a tune, the child’s enunciation quickly worsened. From a technical standpoint the child got it all wrong: omitting words and singing others in the wrong order. The pitch was imprecise. The melody was broken. The tempo was unsteady. And it was the loveliest sound that had ever graced the father’s ears.

Any serious critic would’ve considered the song nothing but a noise fallen short of the mark, a cacophony of significant errors and artistic offenses, but it was genuine and true. And the father could not have imagined a more beautiful noise. The child sang with joy and the child’s joy was the father’s joy.

In October 2001 the world lost a great poet named Elizabeth Jennings.   I have been moved by this particular piece of hers and the reminder that the past doesn’t have the last word (“put memory away” she encourages us).

May you be reminded how this “young girl’s Child” changed everything.

Carol for 2000

Put memory away. Today is new.
Carols and bells ring out and take the year
Into their power. They cast out pain and fear
For everyone and you.

Put memory away. Soft sounds are rocking
A newborn child laid in a cradle made
For animals to eat from. Grace is said.
A child puts out a stocking.

Put memory away and watch a world
Grown almost still because a baby can
Convince us he is born of God and man.
The world’s no longer old.

Put memory away. Tonight is Now.
And new as children’s hopes and old men’s eyes
Soon Kings will come and they are rich and wise
But to a child will bow.

Put memory away and have no fear.
A star is shining on a joyful sight.
A young girl’s Child is born to us tonight
And casts out pain and war.