Random Thoughts on Christmas

Well, with Christmas behind me, I'm hoping that I can make a little more time for blogging. I've thought of a lot of things I'd like to write about lately, but the need to wrap presents and visit the grocery store just one more time kept taking precedence. Don't ask me why.

Yesterday morning, I decided it was time for Bear, our dog, to have his Christmas moment. He did get a special bone on Christmas day -- though I thought the bone would last him for hours (thereby keeping him from driving my father, the dog-hater, nuts) and he polished it off in about thirty minutes -- but we did not give him his "real" Christmas present on Christmas day. You simply can't give a retriever a frisbee and then not take him out to play, and that wasn't on our agenda Christmas morning.

Anyway, when I presented the beloved Flippy Flopper frisbee, Bear was overjoyed. Seriously. I could tell. We headed off to the park with Son3 and his new ripstick in tow. The boy practiced on his new toy, and I threw the frisbee for Bear. That dog will fetch anything, but when he chases a frisbee, he flies. He flattens himself out in a dead run with his ears flopping, fully determined to catch the frisbee. If he makes an awesome catch -- one he just barely snags -- he's inclined to take a little extra run with the frisbee, rather than coming back to me immediately. He may even jump in the creek. If he doesn't catch it, or he has to stop and wait for it before the catch, then he comes right back for a new throw. Because he can jump in the creek for a swim or a drink, he could play frisbee for more than an hour. I usually don't last that long. Yesterday he proudly walked home with the frisbee in his mouth. He wagged his tail, which was coated in tiny icicles, the whole way home.

While we were playing frisbee, I heard a lot of shotguns firing. Guess the hunters received some Christmas gifts. Not a very Merry Christmas for the animals... How killing living things qualifies as a "sport," I'll never understand...

Christmas eve day, I was on my way to a bookstore and listening to a bit of Christmas music. One of my favorite Bill Mallonee songs, "Sing Angel Choirs," came on. One of the lines says, "We stumble around through the message each year. Open these eyes, open these ears." That is always my prayer at Christmas time: to see something new, to know God in some new way.

This year I was thinking a lot about the whole "no room at the inn" part of the message. Our field trip to the National Christmas Center had a profound effect on me. The last part of the exhibit is a re-creation of Mary and Joseph's journey, which really got me thinking about Mary and how difficult it must have been to settle down in a stable to give birth after a lengthy journey. In my twenty-first century, first-world mindset, I often think that God should want to make life easier for me. I think I only need to look at Mary to see that that way of thinking is a bit off. She was chosen for something so amazing we can scarcely fathom it, but she suffered much. Just sticking to the Christmas part of the story, she had to live with a scandalous pregnancy and with a reality that people couldn't and wouldn't believe. I wonder if she had her own doubts sometimes. Then she had to make a lengthy journey just as she was about to give birth and then give birth in a stable. If that were me, I'd be thinking that God would definitely provide a room at the inn. Wouldn't you?

But God, as he tends to do, had his own plans. Jesus was born in a stable, and this makes me love God in just a crazy way. That he came as close as he could to all of us in our desperation and included everyone. Surely there's a message in there for the downtrodden, for the homeless, for the outcast, for those estranged from their families...And that message is that God is with us. God with the homeless, the outcast, the powerless, those who feel they're at the mercy of their circumstances. But also God with the wise, those who seek to understand, those who look for him, those who make a pilgrimage to find him. The wise men were surely wealthy, bearing those amazing gifts, and God is with them too. And this year it struck me, God with the animals too. I often think of those verses in Romans 8 that say that all of creation has been subjected to frustration and is in bondage to decay, and all of creation is groaning, waiting for liberation and freedom. Jesus, born in a stable, is surely a message to God's creatures. I am with you too. You are not forgotten. Liberation is on the way.