What I wanted to say was...

An unspoken Christmas Eve Devotional

Two days ago I led our church in a Christmas Eve Service. It was the 20th time I had done this, so I had a lot I could draw on. 

My devotional ended up being about Mary, who “pondered” and “treasured” in her heart  all that she saw and heard. 

But I wanted to say something else.

I wanted to make it deeper, and more personal. I ultimately decided not to do so (it was a game-time decision) for two reasons. First, I didn't want the attention to be on me. I mean, I like attention, but not during a Christmas Eve service. Second, I wasn't sure I could pull off what I wanted to say without making some people feel down. Not that feeling down is a bad thing, necessarily. But again: Christmas. 

But this blog is a space I can explore and share these things. So this is what I wanted to say.

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When I think of the nativity through Mary's eyes, I keep coming back to two words that I need to ponder and treasure (as she did). Those words are suffering and silence.

Mary suffered, of course. She suffered the shame of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy (in a culture much less forgiving of these things than ours).  She suffered as she travelled across the country (likely by foot; the donkey tradition is only there to flesh out your nativity set). And this while nine months pregnant! She suffered giving birth attended only by her carpenter, and in a place reeking of animal waste.

Surely she pondered the great discrepancy between the child's glory (as the angel had told her about) and the fact that she was giving birth in a stable, far from home and far from anything that could bring her comfort. I mean, if this is God's Great Messiah….what is she doing AT THIS MOMENT among the animals and hay? 

The second thing she must have pondered was the silence. Oh, I don't mean the sentimental tripe about it being a silent night because the animals are keeping things down and “little Lord Jesus no crying he makes”. I doubt Mary and Joseph found that night as silent as restful as the carol makes it out to be. How could they?

No, I mean not the silence of the stable but the silence of the skies. 

Where is the flaming billboard announcing the birth of the God-man? Where are the trumpets proclaiming the King of the Jews was here? Where the lightning and thunder and storm that Moses and the people experienced at Sinai?

Why did only a handful of shepherds on the night shift hear the most amazing news ever formed into words? Why was not the very sky torn like a curtain? Why did not the light and noise of heaven loudly proclaim to all mankind, from east to west, that God had become enfleshed and was now dwelling among them?

Why the silence?

Why the suffering?

I will not pretend to give an answer. I'm in sales, not management.  But I can ponder my way to two truths that help me right now.

First, our suffering does not mean God is not using us. 

Maybe it's just my religious OCD (hey, I grew up Baptist) but I always have to fight the idea that if something is not going “the right way” it is because I've done something to tick God off. That my sufferings are a mark of my spiritual negligence. 

I KNOW that is not true; but ideas formed (or malformed) in childhood and adolescence are harder to kill than Bruce Willis on Christmas Eve. 

I don't know why Mary suffered so much, why God did not make it easier. I'm not talking about a room at the Ritz; but giving birth at home, with her mother and the village midwife at her side…is that too much to ask? I can't answer that. But at least her story encourages me not to judge my story by the scale of suffering.

The second truth I have pondered is that the silence of God does not mean the absence of God. 

Now if God is omnipresent then He is never “more” in one place than another. I get that. But if there ever where a time where God was especially “there” in a non-spatial sense, then surely it was the birth of Jesus.

And yet…God is silent in this story.

Yes, He did send his messengers. Once to Mary to let her know the plan, once to Joseph to give words of assurance, and finally to the shepherds on the night shift. But these seem hardly commensurate with the importance of the news.

I mean, if you were Mary….wouldn't you have expected more?

After all, this is God's Son and Messiah, the One through whom the world would be saved. But she apparently never heard the voice of God, except that one time in Nazareth, and even that was mediated through God's messenger.

Did it not occur to her to wonder: if I am to be the mother of His Son and Messiah, would He not talk to me?

But God is silent. Stubbornly, consistently silent. And not just to her. You can count on one hand those in the scripture who heard the audible voice of God.

I have never heard the voice of God. Certainly I have felt an inner voice in my Spirit, which I think I can now distinguish (usually) from my own voice. But even that is not as often or as clear as I would like. 

Part of me would really like some answers. Why did our son have to die; especially that way? Why have I had so much suffering and uncertainty in my health? Why do I seem so ineffective in the ministry? Why does this next chapter of life look like it will be filled with more surgeries and pain than shalom and pleasure?

But God doesn't answer. He seems uninterested in showing His face and revealing His voice. 

Perhaps because he desires to give us freedom. Freedom to believe or not, freedom to choose. 

Perhaps because  it would be too dangerous. It is not a light thing to see or hear God.

Perhaps because we simply are not able yet to see or hear.  As  C. S. Lewis put it, we cannot see God face to face till  we have faces. 

I don't know. I've got more questions than answers. 

But I do know that seeing Mary's story gives me assurance that the silence of God in my life does not mean the absence of God in my life. Just as the suffering I face does not mean He is not still working with me, and through me.

And that assurance will have to do.