Hello friends –
It’s Christmas Eve at the farm. My father and I are settled in for the night, having made our visits to my mom in the nursing home and dined buffet-style with my uncle Jim and his family. We got home just as the dark of midwinter settled in fully around the trees on the hill. The gifts from the neighbors continue to roll in, some on the front porch from those kind acquaintances and some waiting on the kitchen table from our more intimate friends who know we keep the back door unlocked during the day. We’ll have enough cookies, caramel corn, deer sausage and nuts of all kinds to keep us in a food coma for weeks.
While dad was watching Wheel of Fortune, I decided to take a walk and let the silence of the night seep into my bones. After a quarter mile or so, I stopped in at a neighbor’s Christmas Eve Open House. Jim Laramie is a fine man and an excellent cook. You will never leave his house with an empty belly and he boasts the finest homemade gumbo outside of the Louisiana bayous. The warmth returned as he poured me a glass of red wine and his dogs found a place at my feet. I even managed to muscle down a taste of his gumbo – he outdid himself this year!
Walking back home in the chill of the evening, I thought about the people that I had spent time with through the day. It seems the older we get, life’s pain becomes more the rule and no longer just an exception. With my mom in the nursing home, this will be the first Christmas Eve in forty years that only two will be sleeping at the farm. One friend had to make the tough call of divorcing his wife after losing a years-long struggle with her mental illness. Another’s body is showing the ravages of advanced alcoholism. My own brother-in-law lost both parents in the span of one year. The wind shifted slightly as I walked and a soft sleet began to touch my face. Life just seems to get messier and messier.
And yet even in the darkness and cold of my walk and the misty silence surrounding me, my heart clings stubbornly to the hope of the child whose birth we celebrate. A God who ignited stars and spun galaxies was born into the messiness. He lived, grew up and ministered to people mired in the tragedy of a broken world. He came for our broken marriages and dying parents and raging addictions; and somehow the story of his willful death and empty tomb sends a shock wave through all of our mess and changes it somehow. It is no longer hopeless – it can be redeemed.
If we look closely, we can see the sweetness of a husband feeding his infirm wife. If we listen keenly, we can hear whispered conversations of a way out of the addiction. If we are willing to remain, we can witness the frightening beauty of hard hearts being softened; even in the midst of life’s pain. Two millennia later, through war, persecution, and in the face of mounting despair, the light continues to shine in the darkness – and the darkness cannot overcome it.
If there is any challenge I can give you, it is to continue to bear witness to that light. Rest well for now, but make yourselves ready for next year’s adventure. I have never been more convinced of our mission. I have never been more convicted that the essence of the ancient message of hope survives and lives in us. Each in our own way, we have reached thousands of people with that message; and the broken hearts of thousands more wait for that message of hope and redemption and freedom. Thank you for your tireless effort to love people, even when it’s uncomfortable. I hope that you find the time over the holiday to let the silence fill your bones and encounter that heartbeat of ancient love once more.
I give God thanks for all that you do, and wish you all the best for Christmas.
Chris
Christmas Greetings from the Farm
Hello friends –
It’s Christmas Eve at the farm. My father and I are settled in for the night, having made our visits to my mom in the nursing home and dined buffet-style with my uncle Jim and his family. We got home just as the dark of midwinter settled in fully around the trees on the hill. The gifts from the neighbors continue to roll in, some on the front porch from those kind acquaintances and some waiting on the kitchen table from our more intimate friends who know we keep the back door unlocked during the day. We’ll have enough cookies, caramel corn, deer sausage and nuts of all kinds to keep us in a food coma for weeks.
While dad was watching Wheel of Fortune, I decided to take a walk and let the silence of the night seep into my bones. After a quarter mile or so, I stopped in at a neighbor’s Christmas Eve Open House. Jim Laramie is a fine man and an excellent cook. You will never leave his house with an empty belly and he boasts the finest homemade gumbo outside of the Louisiana bayous. The warmth returned as he poured me a glass of red wine and his dogs found a place at my feet. I even managed to muscle down a taste of his gumbo – he outdid himself this year!
Walking back home in the chill of the evening, I thought about the people that I had spent time with through the day. It seems the older we get, life’s pain becomes more the rule and no longer just an exception. With my mom in the nursing home, this will be the first Christmas Eve in forty years that only two will be sleeping at the farm. One friend had to make the tough call of divorcing his wife after losing a years-long struggle with her mental illness. Another’s body is showing the ravages of advanced alcoholism. My own brother-in-law lost both parents in the span of one year. The wind shifted slightly as I walked and a soft sleet began to touch my face. Life just seems to get messier and messier.
And yet even in the darkness and cold of my walk and the misty silence surrounding me, my heart clings stubbornly to the hope of the child whose birth we celebrate. A God who ignited stars and spun galaxies was born into the messiness. He lived, grew up and ministered to people mired in the tragedy of a broken world. He came for our broken marriages and dying parents and raging addictions; and somehow the story of his willful death and empty tomb sends a shock wave through all of our mess and changes it somehow. It is no longer hopeless – it can be redeemed.
If we look closely, we can see the sweetness of a husband feeding his infirm wife. If we listen keenly, we can hear whispered conversations of a way out of the addiction. If we are willing to remain, we can witness the frightening beauty of hard hearts being softened; even in the midst of life’s pain. Two millennia later, through war, persecution, and in the face of mounting despair, the light continues to shine in the darkness – and the darkness cannot overcome it.
If there is any challenge I can give you, it is to continue to bear witness to that light. Rest well for now, but make yourselves ready for next year’s adventure. I have never been more convinced of our mission. I have never been more convicted that the essence of the ancient message of hope survives and lives in us. Each in our own way, we have reached thousands of people with that message; and the broken hearts of thousands more wait for that message of hope and redemption and freedom. Thank you for your tireless effort to love people, even when it’s uncomfortable. I hope that you find the time over the holiday to let the silence fill your bones and encounter that heartbeat of ancient love once more.
I give God thanks for all that you do, and wish you all the best for Christmas.
Chris