Fall on your knees.

I’m not much in the Christmas mood lately.  I guess when you get older, and you don’t have kids around you to make memories with it kind of loses it’s magic.  I have a Christmas tree and ornaments in my garage but honestly? It’s just another thing to clean, and maybe if I was hosting a Christmas party or people over I’d make the effort but to put it up just for me seems like an awful waste of time. Sometimes I’m just so darn practical.  I’m not in a faith community that is celebrating together and I’m avoiding the shopping malls with all their tinsel and decorated trees and Christmas music piped through every speaker.  I started listening to Christmas music a few weeks ago but switched it back over to my “all out 90’s” and “2000’s pop hits” playlists that I’ve been rotating lately after just a few stanzas of the first song. Just call me the grinch, I guess.

But I got a package in the mail a few days ago that had a Christmas CD in it, and the only CD player I have in my life anymore is in my car. So I put it in, thinking I owe the person who sent it to me at least a listen.  The first song irritated me, but the second…. The second one, Oh Holy Night, is one I’ve written about many a Christmas night and has meant so much to me in past years.  And once again it had me in tears, for much different reasons.

The weary world rejoices.

I don’t know how a world could me more weary than ours is right is this moment. Death, long term disability, grief, fear, anger, joblessness, hunger, anxiety, loneliness, division, hurt, the list of things we are all feeling in various degrees is long and depressing.  How I long to feel joy, to rejoice over something.  I had to stop the song and revisit what it is we have to rejoice about…

He appeared, and the soul felt it’s worth.

He appeared, the savior, the one who can defeat death and despair and all the other darkness that threatens to overwhelm us. A human baby with brown skin, born to an unwed mother, in a family of refugees forced to flee their home in fear for his life. This person who was also God who called us to love and give up ourselves for each other, blessed the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and who came that we might have life to the full. Oh yeah. That is worth rejoicing.  That’s something I can get behind.

He taught us to love one another.

Love is something I can really get behind too. But it’s something I haven’t seen much of lately, especially in America. The division, the blatant disregard for human life, for truth, for decency and collaboration and love above all, is truly both disgusting and deeply painful.  I’m struggling to hold on to the faith and the practices that were once dear to me as my eyes are opened to the realities of the hateful and hurtful actions perpetuated in those same communities, by leaders I once trusted. I’m really struggling to navigate friendships that are crumbling because I look at things being said and posted that make me realize that person is truly a stranger to me… one I don’t think I can have anything to do with.  We can agree to disagree on how we take our coffee or on whether a hot dog is in fact a sandwich or not, but I can’t agree to disagree when we’re discussing things like loving others and treating others with kindness and respect. All I can think as I hear this line in the song, over and over, is where is the love???

Fall on your knees.

This feels more like a command this year than an invitation.  Yes, friends, we do need to fall on our knees, and acknowledge we cannot stand without love, without each other, without unity in the pursuit of that which is good, of peace, of gratitude, and hope.

Long ago I decided I would be someone who will be the change I want to see in the world, so I will keep loving, and pursuing peace, and being grateful, and hoping my way through this weary world. May we experience the fullness of this season regardless of where we find ourselves, may we throw kindness around like tinsel, may we rejoice even in our weariness, may we be grateful for extravagant gifts we each have been given as we open our eyes to see them, and may we love freely and abundantly now and for always.