There's no other time of year that we're so busy and frankly so distracted. December starts off with "good will towards men" in the form of charity like the Angel Tree and Operation Christmas Child. We pencil in parties where we'll get the chance to chat with seldom-seen friends and try a new chocolate dessert. We add "something red to wear" to our shopping list for our nine year old in the Christmas program. We buy gifts doing dizzying math making sure to spend a near equal amount on each family member. We fight crowds in stores only to go home to bake and wrap gifts and bake some more. The entire month of December, which now November is now trying to cash in on, is busting at the seams leaving me to wonder if there is really "peace on earth".
Christmas is a challenge.
For Christ is born of Mary
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep,
the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love
(O Little Town of Bethlehem)
We do so much good in our busy-ness. We give. We share. We love. But if we're not careful we get caught up in the busy and, like sleeping mortals, we miss out on the entire reason for Christmas-celebrating Emmanuel,
God with us.
When I have family come in, I do my best to clear the schedule. I want to spend time with them. I want to talk with them and enjoy their company without the interruption of a thousand other activities. God with us. He's here with us always, but Christmas is the time we've set aside to celebrate his humble coming.......and his presence with us. It's hard to do with so much going on.
I like prescriptions. Like when the doctor says take one of these every day and within a week you'll probably stop coughing. I don't have a prescription for the December debacle. There's so much need in the world for servanthood and I'm glad December gives us the charge to go out there and love on people. But there's not enough of us to cure all the ills, even in hyper-kind mode, as we are in December.
Maybe the overwhelming nature of it all has purpose.
Some of us are already decided on the second day of December that we can't do it all. We know that all our doing is but a drop of water in an ocean of need. And on the flip side, we know that so many of the things we're doing aren't really needed at all (Why did I buy that Elf on the Shelf? ).
It all causes me wonder.
There's a song written by John Jacob Niles. He writes of his inspiration for writing the song
A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.
Based on the line the little girl Annie Morgan sang, Niles wrote the song "I wonder as I wander".
We're all Annie Morgans.
....all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6)
We spend much of December singing in an untutored way. Still we sing. And our song is beautiful if only we sing with wonder in our hearts.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on'ry people like you and like I'
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
Make time this December to wonder.