In the distant past, my family would spend a week or two each summer in the West Port Christian Camp. Each camp day ended with a worship service. In those services, we sang a chorus that still rings in my memory: “I’ve Got Peace Like a River.” That memory bubbled up in my thinking about Christmas this year.
Christmas Day is just a few days away. It is difficult for me not to be melancholy. I still distinctly remember the anticipation of collecting the plunder under the Christmas tree. I feel like I was privileged, or plagued, by living through Christmas in the 1950s. The little boy in me strongly desires to return to those exciting, vibrant days of seasonal wonder. I measure today’s Christmas season by those memories. Today’s Christmas anticipation is a great disappointment. Today, I feel mostly anxious and exhausted.
But all that is sourced in my default emotions. When I let my mind just wander about the universe, looking for a star to follow, the sense of loss, of aging, is stronger than the sense of anticipation and adventure of exploring the “not yet.”
A week or so ago, I heard Luke 2 read. My mind found a “star” to follow in the fourteenth verse: “Glory in the highest to God, and on earth peace, among men—good will!” (Literal Standard Version)
The translation may be new to you, but it captures what caught my attention when I heard this verse read and then meditated on its significance.
The angels told us two big things were happening. God was doing something that expressed His nature, as revealed in His creation: Glory. Behind that announcement is the unspoken truth that it was difficult for humans to see God’s glory; it was dark and dank as a dungeon here on Earth. The only glory visible was the glory of humans doing their best to “get” and “control” stuff.
“Glory in the highest” means that God is about to reveal Himself as never before. That “glory” was coming from “highest heaven.” It had to “come” because it was not present! My old pre-adolescent glory of Christmas is gone, now stored only in my memory. That’s the case with all things originating on earth below.
The second capturing of my mind was on the word “peace.”
The fifties ushered in the love fest of the sixties and seventies, the Hippie generation. Peace was a major emphasis during those years of the Vietnam War. Generally, the idea of peace meant leaving individuals to do as they wished, when they wanted. On the larger social scale, it meant not killing anyone.
The Biblical word for peace finds its origin in wholeness or completeness. In my family, the Christmas season is the season of puzzles. When we gather, there is always a tabletop covered with puzzle pieces looking for their adjoining partners. As puzzle pieces are sorted into groups, edges, and colors, the chaos diminishes until the last piece is placed, and we all shout, stand back, and admire our picture of “peace.”
For me, this year, the angel’s announcement to the shepherds was, “Hey, guys! We know you feel like life is hard and overwhelming, and it is! But not for God! All the pieces of life are on the tabletop. But know this, every piece is present and necessary, and not one is missing. That includes the piece that is you. The picture of the completed puzzle has been downloaded into a manager in Bethlehem. Go, check it out.”
Trouble comes when each piece of the puzzle considers itself a complete picture. All the pieces around me are there to enhance my beauty. When they all finally realize this, there will be peace on the tabletop.
Peace is not found in the condition of my life; it is in looking at my life, knowing that I am an essential part of a bigger picture that will one day be a complete graphic of God Himself, Creator of the universe.
The experience of peace is the confidence that every molecule of all that is will someday be in its unique position connected to and with each of the other unique pieces. Peace is experiencing that confident hope today as we look forward to and trust that what our Creator envisioned when he said, “Let there be…” will indeed be.
Coming to this conclusion is what makes God’s will good and brings warmth to the miserable darkness of humanity’s constant collision with one another in pursuit of their personal chunk of paradise.
May you experience peace in this Merry Christmas!
Photo – Two Medicine River on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana on Highway 89.
Baldwin Heirlooms 