The Worst Thing is Never the Last Thing
I have two friends and colleagues in ministry who are critically ill this Christmas season. One has inoperable brain cancer. He has mentioned that this is probably his last Christmas. The other is my administrative assistant, Susan Steuber. She suffered a torn aorta with heart damage. Sometime before, during or after the surgery she suffered a stroke and has not really awakened for 9 days now. She is spending Christmas in the neurological intensive care unit.
In times like these, Christmas takes on a deeper meaning. Superficial sentimentality or even the family tensions that mark our celebrations and get-togethers fade into insignificance. Instead, we realize the depths of God’s love and the divine intervention into human history.
I was sharing my agony with my brother, Greg Jones, who called to my attention the third stanza of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” We should sing all of the stanzas more often, but the third speaks to people for whom Christmas is difficult:
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,6
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
Many people are ill. Others are grieving. Some are unemployed. Some are homeless. Some have no faith. Some are struggling with addictions. Some are spending the first holiday after a divorce. Others are gripped by fear and worry. There are many people “whose forms are bending low.”
The first message of Christmas is that God’s love is more powerful than any evil or tragedy we experience. At the Church of the Resurrection Christmas Program on December 10, Adam Hamilton put it eloquently. Their story that night recounted a father and daughter going through the first Christmas without the girl’s Mom and the man’s wife. Adam summarized the meaning of Christmas this way. He said, “The worst thing is never the last thing. Christ comes. Christmas comes.”
The second message of Christmas is that we should all “rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.”
I desperately miss being a pastor on Christmas Eve. Only once in fifteen years have I had that privilege. But I will be in worship on the 24th and the 25th, and I fully expect to hear the gospel proclaimed and the angels singing.
May you, wherever you are, hear them and be blessed.
