Begin and Never Cease

I had an unexpected emotional breakdown this morning in the car while listening to this track from The Oh Hellos on the way to church.

I love this whole album, and I’ve always thought this particular track is the only Christmas song that makes me want to dance a jig. It sounds like whooping shepherds leaping over Bethlehem fences to go check out this amazing thing a FREAKING HOST OF ANGELS just told them about.

The muscle memory of listening to this song countless times in the past kicked in, and I started subconsciously slapping my leg and tapping my foot. And then I realized that I was engaging with the song and I suddenly found myself bursting into tears—because I was feeling joy.

This Advent has felt so very heavy in the world, especially with violence and war in the Holy Land. So many people I know are bearing so much sorrow. If I have found any fellowship with Christ, it has been in his incarnational identification with our suffering.

But today I was blindsided once again with the euangelion of the Incarnation—the good new of great joy, that Love has not forgotten and abandoned us in a cruel universe, but has arrived as one of us to show us the way forward.

I have to confess, I have had my doubts this Advent season, mostly in the privacy of my own heart and mind. Sometimes this whole Jesus thing feels like a fantasy, a trite whistling in the looming dark. Better to just embrace cynical nihilism and be done with it.

But when I come to the end of that rope, as I have many times before, I often find myself in the position of Puddleglum, C.S. Lewis’ character from The Silver Chair: maybe it is all a lie, maybe it’s just a fairy tale for children and weak-minded people. Something in me is still compelled to believe because there’s no other story I’d rather have be true—the sudden joyous turn of God himself entering our broken, wayward humanity to lead us back home.

Merry Christmas friends. In whatever state you find yourself, I hope this season you find yourself surprised by joy.