Week 3 posts

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.