Thursday, December 14th Laurie Bolen
What gives you peace?
“Christmas starts too early, demands too much and never lives up to the hype!” I grumbled as I grabbed my keys and headed to the grocery store – again. It was Christmas Eve. I had been cooking for days, shopping for weeks and still had gifts to wrap – gifts that didn’t match my boxes or my expectations. And now I was out of cinnamon. Well, not out. The jar in my cabinet had expired along with my patience. My husband John gave me a closed-lip smile, silently acknowledging my grouchy proclamation. He had worked just as hard as I had, bringing home a tree, hauling decorations from the attic, taking packages to the post office and wading through the Chick-fil-a drive-through line. A lot. He had just as much right to be weary, just as much right to cry “bah, humbug,” but with family on the way, he was joyful. So. Annoying.
I closed the car door and rested my head on the steering wheel. “Lord, help me through this day,” I complained. As the car started, the radio came alive. National Public Radio. I know. Just hear me out. There was … silence. I waited. Still… silence. Before my fingers could touch the volume control, a beautiful voice pierced the quiet, the high soprano of a young boy, pure and innocent, singing a cappella. “Once in Royal David’s City stood a lowly cattle shed. There a mother laid her baby in a manger for His bed. Mary was that mother mild. Jesus Christ, her little child.” And then organ and choir: “He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all.” So began, I later learned, the Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast from King’s College in Cambridge, England, every Christmas Eve.
The voice of that little boy filled my car. His words carried me far away from the Christmas clutter and beckoned me inside the spare walls of a stable. What a wonderful name for that shelter. I was in need of such a place – a place of stability, a place of calm, a place of rest. The sweetness of his voice stilled the turbulence in my heart. He sang of another little boy, a baby in Bethlehem, who also broke the silence of a waiting world with the pure and innocent sound of His voice, the Word made flesh. I was disarmed. I was awed. So unexpected. So wonderful. The carol in my car became salve for my soul. Peace where there had been none.
Sometimes the layers of celebration we add to Christmas unintentionally bury it. It is like too much frosting on a cake. All that sweetness – the decorations, the food, the gifts – can overwhelm, the excess leaving us sick instead of satisfied. That was me on that day. But God reminded me, through the voice of a child, that Christmas is plain and simple. It is easy to digest. He called me to put down my fork — my scissors, my credit card — and savor the perfect peace of a sleeping baby in the manger. And I was renewed.
God’s gift to us at Christmas is peace, the peace of knowing that He loves us. “And our eyes at last shall see Him, through His own redeeming love; For that Child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heaven above, And He leads His children on to the place where He is gone.”
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Luke 2: 13-14
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