It is early on Christmas Eve day. I sit with Charlie in front of the fire (a real one with logs and smoke). Like any sane kid, he’s mesmerized by the dancing light. He’s also commenting on how slow the day seems to be going. I’m waiting for the girls to stir so I can yell, “Christmas Eve Gift!” a tradition from Shari’s side of the family which results in an early present. I owed everyone last year even with the advantage of being the first one up.
Shari and I spoke last night on the way home from our last pre-Christmas gathering. We thought back through the last couple of busy weeks and asked out loud the question, “Do you feel less stressed this year?”
I suppose the “stress meter” is not the most positive way to view the success of Advent, but it is a real one for us. What we sensed was that in the midst of the crazy season we both found some places of peace this year. Peace. That is the ticket for all of us. Peace deep down, solid enough to stand on. Peace you can’t conjure but only, somehow, receive.
Certainly this kind of peace is not circumstantial. It’s not our right for surviving the holidays.
Before we had this conversation, our day was not full of peaceful things. My car overheated and died unexpectedly on Broadway. 4 hours later through the efforts of two good friends and James, my new AAA buddy, my only “snow car” settled into holiday resting place.
Hours before this, very early on the 23rd, we get the call we’d been anticipating. Shari’s grandmother has passed away. She was 91 and ready to go be at home with God but it is sad not to see her in our world again. Tears have been part of our Advent.
Certainly peace is not like a present under the tree that always gets to be opened just because of the holiday. For it’s not the holidays, but Him that brings us peace.
In our search for true peace, let’s turn our affections this last Sunday in Advent, to the mother of our Lord, the one who birthed Peace. Her posture in the face of all the hopes - the gift of a child, the visit from an angel, a new husband, the filling of the Holy Spirit - and all the fears - searching for a place to give birth, escaping to Eygpt, hearing chilling prophecies about her baby - was to treasure and ponder. She ran from nothing. She embraced everything. She found peace.
May you receive the peace that He offers.
May Christ Himself meet you in your places of light and darkness.
Merry Christmas, Dave
