The Season Comes 'round Again

      I’m working on this while flying home from Nashville, where Cyndi, Katie, and I attended a concert – Amy Grant and Vince Gill in concert at the Ryman Auditorium. Amy Grant is especially fun at Christmas, and this was no exception. The concert was excellent. In fact, it was a respite, no, a reconstruction, or reestablishment, of the hope of the season. It was what I needed.

Love has come
For the World to know
As the wise men knew
Such a long time ago
And I believe angels sang
That hope had begun
When the God of glory
Who is full of mercy
Sent His Son

      Last week I testified in court as a character witness for my friend, David. It was my first time ever in the witness box; not only that, but I’ve never even served on a jury. My courtroom experience was zero. I’d been thinking about this, about what I ought to say, about not making a mess of things, for two months, since David first asked me. I was more nervous testifying for a friend than I would’ve been testifying for myself.

      There were about six of us on the list to testify, and we were called to the courtroom Wednesday morning at 8:30 am. They were ready for us first thing. I was third in the queue, and I couldn’t’ve been in the courtroom more than three minutes. I was on my way to the parking lot soon after 9:00 am.

      After leaving the courthouse, I drove to Whataburger near I-20 to decompress and work on my Iron Men lesson for Thursday morning. I needed something else to concentrate on. We’re working our way through the book, Jesus is the Question, by Martin Copenhaver, and in chapter eleven (about how we often feel abandoned by God) he wrote, “In most instances, the greatest obstacle to faith is not belief’s irrationality but life’s injustices.” It felt especially on-target to me.

      I drove home, intending to put some big miles on my bike to burn off the adrenaline built up over the past two days, but by the time I got home I was too heavy. I don’t know any other way to describe it. My heart felt heavy, and my mind felt heavy. So instead of riding my bike, I went to bed and napped for about an hour. It worked for Elijah, maybe it would work for me. David has been one of my guys for ten years; I’d underestimated how much of this load I was carrying around.

      I could feel the weight of a family who lost their son because he was doing his job, protecting the community, and the weight of a great friend whose own son was Nathan’s best friend when they were growing up.

      I felt the weight of a police force who feared this was one more instance of open season on officers.

      And I felt the weight on David, how everything can go completely wrong in an instant, even when all you want to do is protect your own family.

      Sorry to be so dark just before Christmas, but these past days were a deep dive into faith for me. I was reminded that the very sense of injustice we often feel is an indicator of the image of God within us. We didn’t learn our expectation of fairness as a process of evolution, but because we were made in God’s image.

      After the concert I left the Ryman auditorium singing songs in my head … mostly this one, which is one of my favorite Christmas songs:

May the new year be blessed with good tidings
‘til the next time I see you again
We'll all join hands and remember this moment
And we'll love and we'll laugh in the time that we have
‘til the season comes 'round again

      Christmas is a reminder that no matter how bad the year has been, whether because of a long quarantine shut-down, or a scary trial of a close friend, or something even worse, God did not leave us to wallow in despair. We aren’t alone, we haven’t been abandoned, we have help to work out our lives. We know and expect 2022 to brings it’s own share of surprises and disasters, but we can enter it with hope because of Emanuel, God with us.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32