Hearing the bells on Christmas day - Tim Talks Politics - The Weekly Brief, December 21, 2018

The Weekly Brief - December 21, 2018

This is the last Brief for 2018. So as we wrap up the year and look ahead to 2019, I'd like to share a few thoughts as I contemplate a rather ridiculous year in the context of Christmas.

It’s been a crazy year, and it seems that one tragedy after another has dominated the news headlines. As observers of world affairs, well versed in current events (in addition to being stressed out over our own studies and personal lives) I think it can be easy to fall to the temptation that Christmas can be contrived, divorced from reality, or “humbug” to use Scrooge’s term.

The season is universally portrayed as a time for happiness, warm fuzzies, and other phrasings to describe positive feels. However, for many, including myself this month, it’s a season in which it’s difficult to enjoy the cheer when preoccupied with pain and suffering.

It’s not just the dangers abroad, but the dangers at home. It’s not just American polarization, it’s feeling overwhelmed at its vehemence and the cynicism that has come with it. And that’s just what affected me externally. There were frustrations closer to home too.

When we reach Christmas and the end of the year, we’re often asked to reflect on the year when all we want to do is lay the dang thing to rest.

If you’re in that place, or tempted to be in that place, I want to wish you a very “Merry Christmas,” because it’s for a future hope in a broken world that we celebrate such a wonderful holiday.

Encapsulated in the birth of Jesus, we find the hope of redemption, the invitation to meet it, the joy at finding it, and the love that results from it that gives us cause for celebration, especially when downcast and overcome with suffering in the world, or in our own personal ives.

Have you read/sung/heard of the Longfellow poem “I heard the bells on Christmas day”?

It’s story is worth noting. On Christmas day, 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (an internationally famous poet) sat in his home in Massachusetts grieving the loss of his wife who had tragically died two years earlier, and the wounding of his son in the Civil War.

If anyone had reason to doubt the Christmas story and its message, Longfellow did that Christmas. Even as he was suffering from personal grief, the nation was tearing itself apart in the deadliest conflict in American history. Within and without, death, destruction and injustice seemed to surround Longfellow.

The poem is his internal wrestling with grief, doubt, and despair:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how I, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

“God is not dead.” The very words of Jesus in the gospels (“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”).

“God is not dead.” God's very name, I AM, a declaration of life and power.

Longfellow’s poem pleads for upturned eyes and hearts at Christmas time, because Jesus is more than just “the reason for the season,” He is the promise of the season, a promise of good over evil, of peace and love triumphant.

It’s not a message that goes away in the face of evil, but rather calls louder for our attention.

So have a “Merry Christmas” this year, even if it comes with tears and longings. For in Christmas, we find fresh cause to be reminded of, and renewed in, the Christmas message of God to humanity in the form of a small child: "Peace on earth, good-will to men."

In the words of Linus, “That’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”