A Mary and Joseph kind of Christmas

Stepping outside onto our back patio, the frigid early morning air startles me, smacking my cheeks like a trainer popping the face of a prizefighter, making sure the boxer is fully conscious.

Moments before I had been inside, listening to the news reports: the murders in San Bernardino, CA., were likely the result of a terrorist attack, the newscaster reports, and this on the heels of the murders in Colorado, Springs, Co., at a Planned Parenthood Clinic, and just a few days before that---the terrorist attack in Paris, France.

The bad news cascades from one day into another, and I am weary of it.

Shaking my head in disbelief, I want to escape to the calmer sounds outside: the morning dove waking her brood, the distant sound of traffic on the highway, the rustle of the leaves.

“If only I could stay in the quietness of my backyard sanctuary and rewind to a quiet, peaceful time, like during the days of the first Christmas,” I wished.

And that’s when the morning cold slapped me back to reality, for I knew that first Christmas was anything but peaceful, as much as we would like to cherish the myth of groomed animals in a manger where the hay is neatly nestled around an antiseptic manger with shepherds smiling on Jesus whose mother has quietly ended her pregnancy with an almost painless birth.

The misery actually began before the Holy Family ever arrived in Bethlehem.

The 90-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was a grueling trip in the best of circumstances, what with the threat of robbers and bandits and the the rough terrain, and if the journey was made during winter, the likelihood of foul weather was ever present. And Mary, nine months pregnant, riding on a donkey about 10 miles a day, would have made the sojourn all the more miserable.

According to the gospel accounts, life didn’t get any easier once Jesus was born.

King Herod, a puppet king for the Romans, was insanely paranoid. His evil antics rival Syria’s Assad or the leaders of most any terrorist organization. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Herod murdered his wife Mariamne and his brother-in-law Joseph after falsely accusing them of having an affair. Later, he executed his own sons, Aristobulus and Alexander, whom he accused of plotting to take his throne. About the time of Jesus’ birth, he tortured each of his slave girls in hopes they would confess to information about rivals to his throne. And in 4 B.C.E., he executed his son, Antipater.

Herod’s political agenda would stop at nothing, including the murder of innocent children, to maintain his authority and power. According to Matthew’s account, when Herod was unable to find out where the prophesied King of the Jews was to be born, he thought the only way to make sure the potential future king wouldn’t be born was to kill every boy baby under two years of age in and around Bethlehem. Given the small size of Bethlehem and its rural surroundings, the massacre would have been a small order for a seasoned veteran of murderer like Herod. Maybe 20 children were killed.

Twenty boy babies murdered.

An angel warned Mary and Joseph. They fled to Egypt, making them refugees for a short time. And so the life of Jesus was preserved, and 33 years later, the religiopolitical powers of his day would cruelly murder him, the most innocent person in history.

Writing several centuries after the birth of Christ, one of the “fathers” of the Church, Cyprian, wrote to a friend about the world they lived in. Cyprian saw, “murderers on the high roads, pirates on the seas; under every roof, misery and selfishness. It’s really a bad world, my friend,” he observed. “It is a very bad world.”

It was then, just as it is now.

Yet, holding on to something intangibly tangible, Cyprian concluded: “…in the midst of this, I have found a quiet and holy people. They have a joy and a strength which is a thousand times better than any pleasure or happiness. They are often despised and persecuted, but they have overcome the world. These people, dear friend, are the Christians—and I am one of them.”

Stepping back inside my house, shielded from the early morning cold, I find warmth, not just from the heat, but from the thought that despite the bad news of another day, I too “am one of them.”

All because of Him.

The One born in a manger.

Destined for the Cross.

Alive today.

And that makes all the difference in this and every Christmas.

Paying attention to detail

After Mass, the nun ever so gently placed the remaining consecrated bread (the “Blessed Sacrament”) in the tabernacle---a wood carved, locked box, beautiful in its simplicity.

I watched her precise and meticulous movements as she focused her complete attention on the placement of the bread: first she unlatched the door of the tabernacle, carefully positioned the consecrated bread in it, moved it to the desired location, latched the door shut, genuflected, and then unobtrusively exited the room. A few moments later, she returned with more consecrated bread and repeated the process, only this time genuflecting before opening the tabernacle, since the Blessed Sacrament was now there.

“Does the lighted lamp hanging next to the tabernacle indicate that the Blessed Sacrament is there?” I asked.

She smiled, nodding an unspoken, “yes.”

I was meditating in the little room I later learned is the Adoration Chapel, adjacent to the church at the Loretto Motherhouse in Loretto, KY., only a few miles from my home.

On occasion I show up and worship with the nuns. I love them, and the ones who know me heartily welcome this Baptist preacher.

“So good to have you back again,” Sister Mary Swain kindly greets me as she clues me in on which hymn they will be singing and quickly introduces me to anyone nearby.

Afterwards, I retreat to the quiet of that little room, the Adoration Chapel. In there, the only movement is the nun as she dutifully attends to the Blessed Sacrament.

The Sister’s attention to detail in caring for the Blessed Sacrament prompts me to pay closer attention to where and how I position Jesus in my life.

It’s all about detail.

Am I slipshod in my approach to Jesus? Do I take his presence for granted? Do I allow the sacred to become commonplace in my life? Do I honor him as I should?

There is nothing particularly glamorous about paying attention to detail. It’s the small stuff of life that makes the difference: carefully lifting the latch on the door of the tabernacle, honoring his presence by bowing, the meditative approach to the tabernacle itself, eyeing where the Blessed Sacrament is laid--- all of which speaks of the heart’s devotion.

And how do I come into his presence each morning as I sit in silent prayer? Do I rush in like a kid in a candy store, more interested in the gift than the Giver, wanting what I ask for right there and then? Or am I willing to walk softly, gently, humbly into the tabernacle, thoughtfully opening my soul to him? And I willing to wait for his gentle whisper in my ear?

This is what Advent is about: anticipating the coming of Christ even as we honor his presence in the here and now, in the seemingly small things of life.

In Livingston, Alabama, where I served years ago, we ministered to students at the University of West Alabama.

I don’t recall her name, but she was a student from from the Middle East, and a devout Muslim.

We invited her into our home.

“If you loan me a copy of the Koran, I’ll give you a Bible. I’ll read some of the Koran if you’ll read some of the Bible,” I bargained.

I’ll always remember the day she brought me her sacred book.

As if she were holding a golden treasure, she carefully handed the Koran to me.

“Please be careful with it, sir,” she respectfully requested.

“If you would, please place it on one of your highest book shelves so to remember that it is a holy book, deserving of great honor and respect.”

I did.

And I hope I do the same for the Lord of my life.

May Advent’s devotion to the simple but sacred things continue beyond this season and the next.

Ever so gently, opening the latch of my heart, I anticipate his presence in the Adoration Chapel.

The nun is gone now.

But I am not alone.

Surrounded by his presence, I welcome his Advent.

And the funny thing is, it's okay

You’ve probably experienced something like it, even though you may not have been able to articulate what it was or is in your life.

It’s that feeling you have when you no longer have feeling.

You know you don’t have it any more.

And you can’t seem to care that you don’t care.

But the fact that you don’t care still disturbs you.

And even though others may not see it in you, like they don’t see the turbulence under the calm of the ocean, it’s still there---that unrest that’s arresting.

The contemplatives of early Christianity’s monastic movement believed that feeling of unfeeling was a temptation to be avoided, for it signified a profound indifference to the things that matter. They had a word for it: acedia.

Contemporary author, Kathleen Norris, likens acedia to “spiritual morphine.”

“You know the pain is there,” she says, “but you can’t rouse yourself to give a damn.”

I suspect acedia or something like it has a lot to do with what we call the Christmas blues. Emotions that swim down deep in the recesses of your soul during much of the year suddenly propel themselves like flying fish to the surface of your emotional sea, blasting into full view for a moment before plummeting back down with a splash, leaving you drained and enervated. You lapse into stare moods, can’t seem to click back in, and don’t care to, anyhow.

Maybe it’s financial strain, loneliness, or grief. Perhaps it’s the burden of carrying the load, day in and day out.

And you wake up one day in December to discover that you can’t care that you don’t care.

What to do?

Instead of doing, try being.

Simply be in the presence of the One who cares that you can’t care.

Advent, which means “arrival,” reminds us that we wait for the “coming.” We didn’t control when he came the first time to Bethlehem as an infant, and we don’t know when he will return the second time in the fullness of his glory, nor can we snap our fingers for him to appear now. He isn’t a genie in a bottle, you know.

But in that waiting there is comfort. “For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones,” the prophet Isaiah promised (Isaiah 49:3).

It’s okay to admit you don’t have it, don’t feel it, and can’t seem to care that you don’t. Find rest in the One who comforts.

Bart Millard recognized he didn’t have it, or at least feared he was losing it.

Bart is the lead vocalist for the popular Christian band, MercyMe. Their songs include the crossover hit single, “I Can Only Imagine.”

The constant stress of performing can wear on a band. Bart was at that place where he didn’t have any more to give.

And no words would come.

One night, Bart hit the sack thinking about how burned out he was.

“I went to bed just really frustrated,” he recalls. “It started feeling like everything I was saying was the same. I just thought, I have nothing else to say. So I went to bed with that on my mind.”

About 3 or 4 in the morning, Bart suddenly woke up. Grabbing his journal, he began to write:

I’m finding myself at a loss for words


And the funny thing is, it’s okay


The last thing I need is to be heard

But to hear what You would say

Word of God speak

Would you pour down like rain

Washing my eyes to see

Your majesty

Then he tucked the words away in his journal and went back to sleep.

He forgot about it for a few weeks, until, while preforming somewhere else, he pulled it out. Together, the band worked on it, and in less that 48 hours, they hashed it together. A new song was born: “Word of God Speak,” which became a number one hit for an amazing 21 weeks.

When God arrives, he arrives.

In his timing,

Not always ours.

And so, we wait,

Not knowing when,

Sometimes not able to care,

With nothing to say,

And nothing to give,

We wait.

And the funny thing is,

It’s okay.