The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Dusty. Noisy. A little on the chilly side. Their faces obscured in the dim light of evening, throngs of people clumped together, shivering. Wanderers in the night, they picked their way carefully across rough ground. Laughter and conversation melded together with the occasional bray of a donkey and cry of a baby, while the scent carried on the breeze was a blend of hot cider and manure. Not your typical Christmas cocktail. Fortunately, the food court was a safe distance away from the animal stalls.

High above the back lot of the Methodist Church, the Star of Bethlehem rose thirty feet in the air and, like everyone else, we followed it in search of the Christ Child.

It was a festival atmosphere where multiple churches came together in interfaith cooperation and provided an evening of free food and hot drinks, hayrides around the property, live music, a petting zoo, and a living nativity where we found Mary and Joseph and the rest of the cast squeezed tightly together inside a tented enclosure, suffering perhaps from a smidge of claustrophobia and a side of stage fright. It seemed authentic to me. I’ve always suspected that’s how it really was, considering the way Luke described the scene when the shepherds arrived. “And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger.” It must have been crowded in that manger, just like the live nativity in front of us. But the little Lord Jesus, no crying he made.

We made our way over to a semi-circle of folding chairs where a man stood before a microphone reading the Christmas story. You’re still wondering about King James’ wording in Luke, right? Or the way I interpret things? I can’t help it. Things like that just stand out to me sometimes. Like the nugget I picked up listening to the reading of the scripture. Turns out, Gabriel and Michael aren’t the only angels named in the Bible. There’s at least one more, and Luke is the only one who gives him credit, right there in chapter two. If you ask me, it’s about time this one got some street cred for showing up. “And Lo, the angel of the Lord, came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.”

It's not one you hear every day, but I predict it will soon become as trendy as Gabriel and Michael in next year’s list of most popular baby names. And when it does, remember you heard it here first. Lo. The angel who scared the shepherds.

Also, your grammar teacher was right. Commas matter.

By now my back was hurting and, as I settled onto one of the folding chairs, my daughter followed after her kids and their friends who wanted to hitch a ride on some hay bales that a John Deere tractor was busy pulling around the parking lot. As soon as the narrator finished speaking, he disappeared, and a woman set up her music at the electric keyboard facing us. The choir lined up in rows behind her and a teenaged boy snugged up to his cello where he sat beside the pianist. The choir director raised her arms, the accompaniment began, and thirty young people began to sing.

It was my favorite Christmas carol. And it seemed as if they were singing just for me—the lonely widow staring down the third Christmas without her darling, daring to let her heart experience a few of the traditions she enjoyed for years with a husband she still can’t believe is gone. 

The young vocalists sang their hearts out while stragglers wandered by, oblivious to the performance, busily chatting and drinking their cider, kicking up dirt and ignoring the concert. In the distance, the sound of a diesel engine with its load of delighted, noisy passengers added to the patchwork feel of the festival’s array of Christmas events, but a small audience grateful for a place to sit listened to the words of a song which had been running through my mind for weeks. The choir stood front and center through it all, backlit by all the dust in the air, as if a fog machine was cloaking them in ethereal billows of tan.

And I wondered if miracles are always overshadowed like this, sent out into a world that isn't sure what to believe, easily distracted by artificial lights and cotton candy and face paint. The choir sang the words, the pianist played her keys, but it was the mournful tones of the cello that captivated me. Amid the flurry of crowds of people on their way to experience something else, the cellist played haunting notes that spoke to us of a promise fulfilled and hope restored. And I sat there on my folding chair in the grimy darkness and wept. From my broken heart. For my broken dreams. And for this song which I longed to hear this Christmas.

“Oh, come, Oh, come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to Thee, O Israel.”

The cellist played every note a tempo while the pianist supported his interpretation. The passion imparted by the instrument was the same mosaic of longing created by the composer, and one that I feel in my soul every day since the moment Rob died. A desire for answers, for rescue, for reunion, for redemption. As my son often reminds me, it’s a yearning for God to make right everything that has gone wrong in His world. And, somehow, too, in mine.

The cellist drew his bow one last time across his instrument and as the haunting note faded, the spell was broken, and we headed home. Soon all the musicians and actors and animals would follow suit. Instruments packed up. The manger stored away for another year. Leftover food and beverages sent home with anyone willing to take some. Lights all shut down, the parking lot empty. There was no apparent reason for even an angel named Lo to hang back and hover, announcing to a weary world that God is with us in our troubles.

Except that I need that reminder. I needed to hear it that night. In the melancholy voice of a young man's cello I heard the echo of my own heart’s cry for Emmanuel, God With Us. I needed to know I am seen in the moments when I feel invisible. That I am heard though heaven is silent. In the middle of a dusty, noisy assortment of holiday entertainments, the cellist’s bow sang for me and all others for whom Christmas no longer feels like the most wonderful time of the year.

This is why Jesus came. To become one of us. To ransom the captives and set us free from all the broken places where life has taken us. He knows how we feel. He suffered here, too.

Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel. To all of us who follow Bethlehem's star where it shines above the  back lot of the Methodist Church, directly into the face of the Christ Child.

The one who came to forever be With Us.