TFD - Finding the Season

As a preacher's kid, and a preacher's spouse, and a just plain regular churchgoer, I figure I've heard the story of Christmas -- not the one with the 8 or 9 tiny reindeer in it -- as many times as anyone possibly could in the past 47 years. So there is a danger for me of becoming like the fish who doesn't really think about water... it's just "there", you know? Then you add in all the stresses and responsibilities and peripherals of the season, and all of a sudden it's December 28 and, hey, what just happened here?

So I've made it something of a quest to find bits and pieces in all the Christmas I'm swimming in that bring the truth of Christmas to me in a new way, or maybe just the same old way but a way that somehow resounds for me. I thought I would share some of these; perhaps one will strike a chord in you as well.

I do have one powerful advantage: I now have over 300 songs (well, not 300 distinct songs; for example, I have 18 versions of "Silent Night") in my Christmas playlist and -- speaking of immersion -- have been listening constantly since the beginning of Advent. As I do, I listen for nuggets of truth in addition to cool tunes.

But the quest actually started with this phrase singing hymns in church: "where meek souls will receive Him, still the dear Christ enters in." Keep in mind that one of the highlights of my season so far has been that one Christmas wall decoration with a punctuation mistake in it didn't make it on the wall this year (and I was already a certified grammar/punctuation/spelling geek) ... so it surprises me a little that the point of this sentence hinges on punctuation, and I've been missing it. It is the end of the 3rd verse of a 2nd-tier carol, so I have a small excuse. Plus, the way the music is phrased makes it sound like this: "Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in."

That makes it sound like all the perseverance -- the continuing action -- is on us. That is, we're still receiving Him. Good for us! Oops... look again: comma after "Him", which is to say it's Jesus who's still continuing to enter. It's not on us, it's on Him -- and He is faithful to fulfill His part of the bargain.

Two more seasonal truths come from my favorite Christmas album -- do I even have to say it? I've written it all before. Steven Curtis Chapman's "Precious Promise" tells the story of when first Mary, then Joseph, then the shepherds, then the whole world get the news of Jesus' birth. In Mary's verse, we find this line: "But her questions and her fears are met with an overwhelming joy that God has chosen her."

Like anyone, she had questions and fears; what made her special was not that she immediately reported for duty without questioning... but rather that she was able to question, and also able to let that joy permeate her to the extent that it pushed all the fear right on out. Maybe the key faith issue is: which voice do you want to listen to? Your own, or the still, small voice...

The other Chapman lyric which speaks deep truth to me comes from "Our God Is with Us": "And we will never face life alone now that God has made Himself known as Father and friend, with us to the end -- Emmanuel." The Christmas story is full of miracles, of course, but the central one is this. I'm not going to bother to look this up, but I'm pretty certain I've written about this before -- not because I'm short on ideas (or at least not solely for that reason) but because it continues to blow my mind. It comes down to this: God loved us so much that He couldn't just watch "from up there" as we struggled our way through life. He cared enough to send the very best: himself. Not science fiction, but the God of the universe fitting Himself into a newborn baby. If you can't feel the synapses in your brain popping like old-fashioned flashbulbs thinking about that, don't bother with the SyFy channel.

And if you do feel that popping, imagine how Mary must have felt. One of my favorite Christmas Scripture verses is, "But Mary treasured all these things up and pondered them in her heart". I can tell you what day it was when my daughter's teacher called to say she'd become a "leader" of her kindergarten class (in three days of school); I know where I was standing when my son's 2nd grade teacher made an emotional speech recognizing him as Most Improved Student; I can only imagine what it would be like to have shepherds and wise men and angels show up. But that's really what I'm striving to do in this season -- to treasure the story up in my heart anew, to ponder it all over again. And I pray you won't let the season slip by without doing the same.