I was struck in a conversation this morning of how Christmas is hard for bedtime routines with young children and how we all look forward to resetting the routine afterwards. That sense that Christmas is actually an inconvenience to our routine, our children’s routine and that it would be easier to skip over it.* Then it struck me that that is exactly what Christmas ought to do, to upset our routines and wake us up from slumber. Ok I would still love easier bedtimes and children sleeping for longer, but I realised as other Christmas plans also have gone awol this year that they are not the things that should be stressing me out. Christmas, Christ, His peace, His coming needs to jolt me from my routines, my habits, my disciplines. I need to hold routines with less grip and welcome the interruptions that wake me from sleep walking my way through this life and pay attention to the disruption. I need to remember that Christ is not the doll in the nativity manager but the Living God who is sovereign over all. There should not be a getting back to normal for those of us who welcome Christ and follow Him.
It made me think of these lines from Annie Dillard, from her book Teaching A Stone To Talk.
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”
*I am not dismissing the upheaval the season of Christmas can have for children. It can be huge, overwhelming but in that moment thinking of them and their overwhelmedness, they taught me a valuable lesson and for that I am thankful.
Joshua's Tree Rooted 