NIGHT OF FEAR AND GLADNESS
“You
will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.”
Would there be room for you and me around
that manger in the crib? Can we claim a place among the angels and shepherds?
The angels marvelled at the glory of God, which they could see, and that sight
called forth their special song, “Glory to God in the highest.” The shepherds
were the first among us to see the Child, and on “seeing him they discovered
the truth of what had been told them about this child.” But the shepherds did not
see what the angels saw, nor do we share the vision which the angels relished.
We do not see God as he is, for no man can see him and live. The greatness of
his majesty is too much for our frailty. We could not bear or dare to see him
face to face, until prepared and strengthened to do so.
In the presence of that little Child we are
at peace, like the shepherds. We are not overwhelmed. Now we too look at the
child and perceive the truth of what has been told about him. We see one thing:
a little child. We believe another: God made man. We do not see what the angels
saw, but we believe what the shepherds understood and even more than they, as
our faith grows stronger and more clear. Faith, not sight, makes us sing the
angels’ song: “Glory to God in the highest.” The song of blind people who have
not seen but have heard the good news, and believed. And there is a gentle
peace in the singing of that song. It is the peace that comes from giving glory
to God, of reaching beyond where thought and word can take us into God’s world.
The humble sing for they have generous hearts, hearts moved by God beyond the
weakness of their minds.
“Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news
of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people.”
“Why should I rejoice?” My life projects no
day when I shall keep from tears, pain, anxiety, and fatigue. Ask me not where
I have pain but where I don’t ! If God
be the goodness, which is claimed for him, if he has that love for us, which no
human love can match, then why does evil seem to rule our hearts and hold sway
in his creation? There is no answer beyond the gentle assurance: “Rejoice, do
not be afraid.”
Terror comes when we see no escape from the
darkness that surrounds us, when we see no light. Terror is the child of
despair, ugly and cruel. Yet when terror holds us in its vice, hope is often
born. Darkness yields to light. A Saviour has been born, the Lord Jesus Christ
himself, for “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son so that those
who believe in him may not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3,6).
“Do not be afraid.” We need never be
alone. Every burden carried by us is also shared by him. “Give me your burden,”
he says, “and I shall make it mine.” He will not always lift the load from us,
but being his too, it is lighter now and sweeter. We do not understand why we
are fallen and sinful, weighted and wounded. Yet he does not will our sadness
or pain, but wants us to know his goodness, and to trust, to find his love and
rejoice. The secret hidden in his word will be opened to us. It is the secret
of his love, warm, close and true. That love is the meaning of his life, the
significance of his being. It is the reason of his mission when he came to us
man.
There is deep in the heart of each of us a
longing - it is a longing to understand the meaning of
our lives and the lives of others. It is also a longing for happiness,
contentment, joy, call it what you will. We go on waiting and expecting, each
day, that the riddles of life will at last be solved. Tomorrow we shall secure
that happiness that eludes us today; hoping till the word of the enigma is
delivered at our doorstep.
The years that have been were a long
advent, a looking forward to that day when the dreams of what might be become a
reality. It is, after all, community in God for which we ache, though often we
do not know it. There is an experience of love here, a moment of bliss there,
like heralds announcing what will be, when we shall know only God and find in
him the fullness of contentment. The time for that is not yet. We must wait.
But in the meantime we have the Child.
He comes each year into our midst, to those
of us who prepare our minds for the festival of Christmas. It is the feast of
his coming once in time, God becoming man, so that we, with hope and courage,
may continue on our pilgrim way, which will lead one day to the vision of him
in whom is our eternal happiness.
How wonderful that we are one with the
people who lived in Palestine at the time of Jesus’ birth ! How beautiful that
we can continue singing the angels’ song in a spirit of faith, with the
eagerness of hope, and with hearts full of love ! For we know that the story of Christ can
repulse the forces of destruction which rage against out earthly habitations
and our inmost selves, bring security amidst dizzying changes, sift the
chattering messages that confuse our minds, and still the fears that threaten
to devour us. But only if we believe it is true. It is not enough to sing the
carols out of habit like an endless track in a shopping centre, to go through
the rituals like touching a talisman, or to pass on the story like an Aesop’s
fable. Simply as a story it might not survive, for it is not in essence a nice
story. But as a true story it is many times more powerful than all the awesome
forces that 21st. century man can muster. They can change the world;
this story can change them. Yet whether or not that change will come depends on
whether we look into the Bethlehem stable as outsiders intrigued by a
curiosity, or enter it and read the world outside through the eyes of the Child
who is at once true God and true man.
Only there can we know ourselves as we
really are, the world as it really is, our future as it really can be. It is a
raw and painful knowledge, like birth itself, painful but promising, and, like
that birth, with power over all waves and winds, whether of earth or the
spirit, bringing not just fleeting comfort but lasting, ever lasting
confidence, security and peace. To the awesome problems of man the awesome
answer is that God has pitched his tent among men, “entirely of one build and
unaltered,” the same today, yesterday and forever.
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