If Christmas shows us anything, it shows us that God's ways are so far ahead of ours as to make comprehension impossible. Sometimes, all we see is wreckage and dead ends and broken dreams. We see the apparent futility of hope when God didn't save our loved one, didn't mend the broken family, didn't save the job, didn't prevent the catastrophe.
I could go through the news and pick out any number of horrific stories. I could go through the social media posts and messages of close friends and do the same.
In my own life, as in many other people, there is a longing, an emptiness and a grief at Christmas. Grieving the loss of a loved one, facing a terrible crisis or trying to pick up the pieces of shattered dreams, leaves us vulnerable to despondency and a dearth of hope.
Often, the coldness of people - especially people we have cared about - is far worse than the coldness of winter and with far more calamitous effect.
Then we look at Christmas and see that the kings of the earth were conquered by a baby and we realize the folly of trying to keep score.
The audacity of believing in miracles at Christmastime springs from the audacity of Christmas itself. A star dancing in the sky to herald the arrival of a baby shivering on a bed of straw. The one who made the star is announced by it, the one who made the cold, suffers from it. A God who makes Himself totally helpless before His own creation so that we stumbling dimwits can somehow rise above our fecklessness.
The audacity of God is that He often works through the most imbecilic and hopeless meatheads and reprobates of all so that people do not have any choice but to give Him the credit. I belong to the fraternity of people who are decidedly bewildered at their own ability to mess things up. Christmas is tailor made for folks like us because Christmas shows that God can untangle even the most frustrating and desperate knots with miracles of every kind and variety between heavenly fire and swaddling clothes wrapping a newborn baby boy.
Many folks are not ready to hear this message now as they kneel before a gravestone or are missing someone for another reason.
Nevertheless, I will gently convey the message and it, like a seed planted in your soul, watered by your tears, will begin to grow until one day the flower of hope blooms again within you.
Christmas doesn't promise you no sorrow. Far from it.
The very week after the first Christmas, Herod's barbaric edict brought to death the holy innocents.
Christmas - and Christianity - does not exempt us from membership in the fraternity of grievers nor does Jesus suddenly become a genie who grants all our wishes.
As my wise friend Christie once asked me, Have you even read the gospels?
The real miracle of Christmas is accomplished in the fact that Jesus came to save us and the biggest tragedy of all is if we were not to be saved because we don't think we need saving.
In His magnificent and inapprehensible love, God reminds us of our helplessness by allowing life to just beat the ever-loving daylights out of us and/or by allowing grief and suffering to cloak us and follow us without respite.
and so we pray and hope for miracles in this season of miracles.
It is impossible for that not to be the case.
It is also virtually impossible to not become dismayed, despondent and downright depressed when our cries for relief go unanswered and when God does, in fact, allow the collision with the iceberg or does, in fact, allow the wound to go unmended, the relationship to remain shattered and broken.
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
Then one day you look back and see that God granted the greatest miracle possible in that he didn't stay the storm but kept you going in it, against all odds, beyond the furthest limits of your own strength. Following the star, across the desert. Oppressed by the heat of the day, shaken by the cold of the night, you march on and on, following the star until you arrive at the manger crib.
Nowhere is this dynamic shown more clearly than in the Christmas song Good King Wenceslas where the good king gives us such a precious image of Christ, Our King.
“Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger; Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer. ”Mark my footsteps, good my page. Tread thou in them boldly Thou shalt find the winter’s rage freeze thy blood less coldly.”
In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted; Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed. Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing, Yè who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.
What a grand mystery. The same God who called these men to bring food and drink to a poor and destitute man, responded to their "yes" by pounding them with a blizzard. How often do we, in self pity, feel betrayed and ill used by God when He treats us this way?
Even Saint Theresa of Avila, in a moment of frustration, said to God:
Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few of them.
Let's be honest though. The King and the Paige became heroes precisely because the storm didn't stop them. God's grace was manifested in such a more endearing way. What hope and consolation must this poor beggar have received knowing that the King himself, and his servant were willing to face possible death to bring him some holiday comfort and joy on the 2nd day of Christmas?
To the extent that it be within His providence, I truly hope God brings you the miracles you seek this Christmas. I hope He solves that financial difficulty or that healh problem or fixes that broken relationship. At a minimum, I hope He brings you consolation if you are grieving and strength to go on if you are suffering.
However, the audacity of Christmas is displayed in the one and only miracle that God has positively promised you and that is the greatest miracle of all.
For unto you, is born this day, in the city of David, A Savior.
God's greatest miracle for you will not be to save you from hardship or want or pain or sorrow or desitution or even death. God has come to save you from you and to give you an eternal reward as recompense for your current temporal pain.
That's a miracle that's promised and yours for the taking if you are willing.
Merry Christmas!
Commentaires