Promises

December 22, 2018

Christmas is fast approaching with all its promise of peace and joy heralding its soon arrival. School winter concerts, extra church doings, digging out the decorations, shopping, wrapping, setting up the tree; we’ve been busy. Sometimes perhaps a bit too busy.  Every Hallmark movie, every Christmas special purports to know and proclaim the “real meaning of Christmas,” somehow never remembering the One whose birth it celebrates. The old “Charlie Brown Christmas” at least had Linus reciting the Christmas story from Luke 2, but apparently, it’s a bit too offensive for our modern sensitivities.

I have no beef with the goodhearted programming, even if it falls far wide of the mark when it comes to the real meaning of Christmas. I’ve long ago given up any illusion that this world has even the ability, let alone the desire to promote a Christian message. That would be like the Ford dealership promoting Toyotas. It’s not in their interest to do so. 

What bothers me is how even I get sucked into a holiday mood that will vanish like Dracula in the morning sun on Christmas afternoon. When the roots are shallow, it’s unreasonable to expect the fruit to withstand even the slightest wind of adversity, even though it’s probably just human nature to want to feel all warm and cozy inside. I’d like to think the Christmas feeling has substance, but whenever I try to get my hands on it, it disappears, only to pop up enticingly somewhere else.

Jesus wasn’t born into a Hallmark world. Abject poverty, hunted from birth by Herod, a most ruthless and murderous man, refugee in another country when barely out of diapers, only to be falsely accused, betrayed, abandoned, and crucified some thirty years later. And yet, from the bowels of such a dog-eat-dog world, he told his followers, “Peace I leave with you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Don’t let your heart be afraid.” Jesus was no romantic. Both feet were firmly planted in the cruel reality of this world right up to the day they were nailed to it on Golgotha’s hill. His is no cozy, cuddly peace, but the deep assurance that despite the violence and troubles of this life, God has not abandoned us, and will in fact vindicate his saints.

I’m actually thankful the promises of this world come up empty. When they do, they serve to remind me to look for the promises that never run out, and to drink deeply from the well that never runs dry. To do so, I have to slow down so I can pay attention. God often whispers, and it’s not only my flesh and blood ears that have a hard time hearing. But hear they must, and hear they will. My life depends on it.