And it's still Christmas

Who can measure the energy unleased by children tearing through wrapping paper on Christmas morn?  After that it gets harder, navigating a special meal and sometimes too difficult relatives. It either goes by quickly or not quickly enough.

And yet it is still Christmas.

In Syria, folks are very busy killing one another.  In war zones, children suffer the most because they have the least power to improve their situation or protect themselves.  They cannot persuade government officials to open borders for them so they can seek refuge.  Their young bodies cannot withstand the physical abuse that comes with war.  One 3 year old Syrian boy was reported to have said, just before he died,  'When I see God I'm going to tell him about this.'

And yet it is still Christmas.

Terrorism has come to Russia as a train station and a trolley car are targeted and lives are lost.  In our major cities young men are targeting each other for purposes unknown.  The long term unemployed are about to lose their benefits and food stamp recipients receive less food.

And yet it is still Christmas.

In the gospel of Matthew, just verses after the birth of the Christ child, King Herod is so terrified of the coming king (Jesus), so jealous and protective of his own power, so frightened of a world where he was not the Top Dog, that he ordered all the boys under the age of 2 in the town of Bethlehem killed.  The church calls this event The Slaughter (or Martyrdom) of the Innocents.   It probably didn't actually happen that way (although Herod was ruthless enough to have ordered it)....it probably isn't fact....but we all know that it is true.

And yet it is still Christmas.

Jesus did not come to toss some glitter on a broken and wounded world.  Jesus came to stand in the midst of the war and hunger and pain and dysfunctional families to shine a light on a better way of being with and for one another.  Jesus came to heal, to bind up, and to make whole.  He makes possible the impossible: that we would lives of grace and mercy. and he did that through forgiveness.  Jesus is the gift of Christmas, the one who rules with mercy and grace.

It is not easy to tackle the conundrum of a world torn apart with violence and crushed with poverty and the soft glow of our Christmas remembrances, but that is exactly what Jesus calls us to do.  The gift of the Christ child only has meaning when it has meaning in the harsh light of the world in which we live.