Antidote to the Christmas Treadmill #2

I’ve been mulling over Rick Warren’s words about all of us wanting to get off the Christmas treadmill but not quite knowing how. Here’s one thing to try during the coming week: listen to the Christmas story being told all around you. “What?” you say. “This is 2005. We’re not even allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas’ in public. The Christmas story has been buried this year.”

I don’t think so. I think God is speaking in the still, small voice same as He ever was. For example, this season millions of Americans will see a story of freedom from bondage accomplished through sacrifice (in fact the good news of Christmas) when they rush to catch “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”—and they will happily pay to do it, thinking it is great holiday outing for the family! Another striking example: my daughter’s “Winter Concert” last night. In the public school’s effort at political correctness, the kids sang songs from around the globe. Thus, my daughter sung Alleluia to the birth of Christ in the language of Ghana, but praise is praise and God is apparently still using the mouths of babes where adults won’t speak about Him. My daughter’s group then sang “Hatikva” in Hebrew which a student translated for us, telling us that we will find our ultimate home and comfort in Zion. Amen. Best of all, another choir sang a “traditional Israeli text” in Hebrew which the conductor read in English for us before the song began: “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of them that bring good news—the news of salvation.” What could be more appropriate for Christmas? And who would have suspected that a public school teacher would read to us about the real meaning of Christmas—the good news of a Savior?

It strikes me that this quiet telling of the story is not really all that different from the way the news was broken on the first Christmas. The original message was not a government-sanctioned announcement. In fact, the government, in the form of King Herod, did would it could to silence the news. Luke 2 had not yet been written and no one erected manger scenes in the public square. (Well, acually, they probably did but only for animals to eat out of.) Yet the news was there for seekers—-in the miraculous star for the intellectuals of the day and in the words of the angels to a small group of working class people.

Listening to that “Winter Concert” got me off the holiday treadmill as I reflected on the way God gets His message out and His obvious presence despite the public school’s efforts not to acknowledge it. I did not know whether to laugh or to shed tears of thankfulness. So try to listen for the still, small voice steadily making the real Christmas message available to anyone who wants to listen this week. It’s sure to get you off the treadmill for a few minutes at least.