Christmas 2009

So, there goes Christmas for another year. Well, actually only Christmas day. And, even more actually, just Christmas morning, but you know what I mean. We build up to this two hour happy fit all year and its all over in, well... two hours. But then again we still have Boxing Day and the rest of the twelve days of the season through January sixth. By then I’ll be glad to put feasting and frolicking behind me for another year. But we’re about to put a turkey in the oven, and there’s still plenty of egg-nog, so party on!!!

Suzanne and I are spending Christmas in North Bay with our oldest boy, his wife and two year old daughter. Our second oldest is also with us. What fun to be with a little child at Christmas. This is the first year she’s really been aware of what’s going on and we had to play down Santa a little because she was getting very nervous about him coming into the house while we were all asleep. She seems to think that a nocturnal home invasion is invariably a bad thing. – Too much CNN. – She’s feeling more positive about the old saint now.

God bless you all, and I hope you’ve had a great year and a wonderful Christmas. Here’s a picture of the stockings this morning. The funny one, second from the left, is a doggy sweater, and the ridiculously huge one is for our grand daughter. You could literally put several boxes of Cheerios in it, but that didn’t happen this year.

Ready for Christmas

Remember Scrooge, when his heart had been changed by the Spirits of Christmas, which are of course the Spirit of Jesus. He was suddenly ready to receive God, and all of the “God things” in his life: invitations to give to the poor and share with fellow human beings; the opportunity to embrace the nephew who had disappointed him, to forgive his nephew and, what is even harder, to receive his forgiveness; and the responsibility of cherishing his clerk, Bob Cratchit, helping him raise his family, and finding some way to heal their Tiny Tim.

At the end of the 1952 movie with Alistair Sim, Scrooge orders Cratchit to go out and buy a new coal scuttle. Then he sits at his desk laughing and saying to himself, “O, I don’t deserve to be so happy.” Then, tossing his pen over his shoulder, he chuckles, “I can’t help it. I just can’t help it”. These are the last words he utters in the movie. But it isn’t really happiness we see portrayed in this scene. It’s joy.

When I was a child my father had a little poem he used to read to us each Christmas Eve. It was one of the many Christmas traditions we had in our family, and I share it with you in the hope that it will help in your Christmas preparations as it always did in ours. It is an invitation to refocus on what really matters at Christmas; an invitation to JOY.

Ready for Christmas

"Ready for Christmas", she said with a sigh,

As she gave the last touch to the gifts piled high.

Then wearily sat for a moment and read,

Till soon, very soon, she was nodding her head.

Then quietly spoke a voice in her dream,

"Ready for Christmas? Just what do you mean?

Ready for Christmas, when only last week,

You wouldn't acknowledge a friend on the street?

Ready for Christmas, while holding a grudge?

Perhaps we had better let him be the Judge.

For how can the Christ child, come, and abide,

In a heart that's so selfish and filled with pride?

"Ready for Christmas, when only today,

That homeless boy there and you looked away,

Without even a smile to show that you cared?

The little he needed, could well have been spared.

Ready for Christmas? You've worked, it is true,

But just doing the things that you wanted to do.

Ready for Christmas? Your circle's too small.

No, you are not ready for Christmas at all."

She awoke with a start, and a cry of despair.

"There's so little time, and I've still to prepare.

O, Father forgive me; I see what you mean,

To be ready is more than a house swept clean.

It's more than the giving of gifts and a tree.

It's a heart swept clean that he wants to see.

A heart that is free from bitterness sin.

Ready for Christmas, and ready for him."

--Alice Haneche Mortensen

Sunday, the Fourth Week of Advent

JOY

When I was a child I remember my mother worrying every Christmas that she wouldn’t be ready. This was a great mystery to me. If there was anything in the world I was always ready for it was Christmas. But every year I’d catch her muttering under her breath, “I’ll never be ready!, I’ll never be ready”. And every year she would, at some point, sit us all down (8 children) and say, “You’ll all have to pitch in and do more, or we won’t be ready, and Christmas just won’t come this year.” I don’t remember that we actually did pitch in and do more, but I do remember that Christmas managed to come somehow, every year.

So, are you ready for Christmas? Well, if not, don’t worry too much about it. In my experience Christmas happens every 25^th of December,…ready or not. And it’s always wonderful.

And, just think about that first Christmas. Were Mary and Joseph “ready” for the birth of Jesus? They didn’t have a nursery set up with a little crib and hanging mobile. They didn’t have a house, or an apartment, or even a room in an inn. But God had chosen them and, presumably, had been preparing them all their lives. He seemed to think they were ready for this.

They were ready to devote their lives to making a family for the Son of God; to bear the shame of an untimely pregnancy, and the dangers of being on the wrong side of King Herod; and ready to manage the uncertainties of raising the Messiah. In short, they were ready to drop everything when God called on them and, in this uncertain world, it’s hard to be much more ready than that. And if the proof is in the pudding, this Christmas pudding turned out just fine.

As we light the fourth candle and enter the fourth week of Advent, the Christmas week, the accumulated love, peace and hope of the previous three weeks turns to joy. But to enter into joy we must deal those old joy thieves, Stress and Anxiety.

You see, no one is ever ready for God, in the sense of having everything in order. We can never have enough decorations up, baking done, presents wrapped, cards sent, parties organized, or worship services planned for God. Whatever we do, he deserves infinitely more. But what we can have is what Mary and Joseph had; hearts ready to recognize him, give him top priority, drop everything and welcome him.

Joy doesn’t come from trees and cards and gifts, not even from parties and friends and family. Joy is the state of being we are in when we’re ready to receive God at a moment’s notice, drop everything and celebrate. As Isaac Watts wrote, way back in 1719:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come,

Let earth receive her king.

Let every heart prepare him room,

And heaven and nature sing.

It's All About Remembering

Last Saturday it was -31°C when my wife and I walked over to the farmers’ market (an indoor venue of course). It’s only about five city blocks, and there was no wind, but -31 (-24 American) is cold enough to be an interesting experience. And it’s more than an aching face; things actually sound different at that temperature, and we could hear the crunching of tires on the snowy streets several blocks away. The next morning when we left for church it had dropped to -36°C (-33°F) and they say it was -46°C (-50.8°F) at the airport, which is why nobody lives at the airport. And we’re told that the wind chill was -58°C (-73°F). That’s the coldest temperature recorded in North America that day, and the second coldest in the world.

So, why do over a million people live in the Greater Edmonton Area? Well, there are actually lots of good reasons, but at -58°C we’re reduced to only one; sheer and irrepressible HOPE. We know that regardless how bitter it is today, spring will come eventually. At least it always has. And, just to encourage us, mini-springs happen all the time. Those of you who have only known minus ten as a temperature you can go down to, cannot possibly comprehend how different it is when you go up to minus ten.

And HOPE is why Christmas, which was essentially created by Europeans, has quite arbitrarily, and understandably, attached itself to the latter part of December. It’s a dark time in northern lands – for me the Sun rose at a quarter to nine this morning, and will set this afternoon at a quarter past four – and the cold weather, my introduction notwithstanding, doesn’t really even start till January.

So, what is my point in all of this? Well, it’s experience that makes life possible because it makes hope possible. We trust that rest will follow toil, harvest will follow planting, peace will follow war, healing will follow injury, not because they must but because, for the most part, they always have. Perhaps this is why children, and childish adults, become so upset with little bumps and disappointments. They lack the perspective that comes, or should come, with experience.

And we who have experienced the love and peace of God, and his faithfulness in the midst of trouble, find ourselves hoping even when despair seems more in keeping with the situation. We know, of course, that we will have our share of trouble, but in spite of cold and darkness, fear and longing, pain and sorrow, we also know that he will come. He is Emmanuel, God with us, and at this cold, dark time of year we tell the story of his coming, like the springtime, like new life and new love, and like that little baby born in Bethlehem.

Yes, this is hope, to know that he will come. Because he must? No, he’s God after all, and no one can make him do anything. Because he always has.