On the second day of Christmas…

polloplayer

Dec 2

My true love gave to me:

Two cats a' hacking hairballs

(indelible stains on the carpet)

and

one insane French hen, running amok.

(Have you ever tried to catch a chicken?)

And hey, the day is still young!

This is the kind of thing that happens only when you already have a thousand things to do.

I've got two lists of deadlines. The first is marked "URGENT". The second is marked "MISSED". And at this point I'm simply moving items from the first to the second, because with the shenanigans going on around here there seems no possibility of a third list marked "DONE".

I am not at peace. Perhaps we are in the season of silent nights, but for me they are accompanied by the steady and grating sound of the grinding of teeth.

If you were to drive past our house, you might be fooled into thinking we have it figured out.

But does anyone, ever, have it figured out?

For all my petty upheavals, I know I will somehow make it to the finish line, albeit in tatters. But for so many, this is a season truly full of hurt, of loneliness, and in some cases of woes larger than anyone can comfort. God grant me the wisdom to set down my lists and be present and useful where and when there is a need. And to find joy in the season even as darkness bubbles up in the world beyond our festooned gates. To learn to celebrate now because now, more fully in this moment, because, of course, nothing else is certain.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor martyred by the Nazis, wrote to his parents from Tegel prison camp November 29, 1943 saying:

"We can, and should also, celebrate Christmas despite the ruins around us...I think of you as you now sit together with the children and with all the Advent decorations - as in the earlier years you did with us. We must do all this, even more intensively because we do not know how much longer we have."

This is the first entry in the Advent devotional God is in the Manger, drawn from the Bonhoeffer work I Want to Live These Days with You: A Year of Daily Devotion

It's a good place to start.