Is it a Grindstone Christmas?
Life
is a grind. I say this in a very
positive way but it is a grind. The
shepherds were in a grind, too. Day
after day tending sheep, caring for family, making ends meet. Many of us get up in the early morning,
exercise, read the paper, shower, dress, drive to work or stay home to
work. At work, we are focused on the
goals of our employers and that requires our full concentration and effort for
the day. After a required business
reception, we arrive home around 7:00 p.m., have dinner, perhaps attend a
school function, get home again, put kids to bed, and then ourselves to
bed. The next day we get to start all
over again. And now it’s December, so we
have the opportunity to combine our daily grind with Christmas receptions,
parties, cooking, gift shopping, tree buying, house decorating, family dinners
and more shopping for the perfect gift. To
borrow a familiar idiom, to make-it through these next few weeks we must keep
our nose to the grindstone!
I
shared this idiom recently in a weekly English class. The class is composed of university students
wanting to improve their English. We
currently have three countries represented: China, Vietnam and Nepal. The accents are extremely varied but the
teaching is fun. This week after our
consonant work we focused on reading comprehension and pronunciation while
speaking. The article we read was
entitled, The Real Meaning of Christmas.
It was the Christmas story as told from the Biblical account in
Luke. I explained to the students that
this story was the REAL story not Santa, which one student asked, “is he the
man in the red suit?”
After
reading the selection, we engaged in questions about the text. My first question was: “Have you ever heard
this story before?”. Of the 5 students
attending that day, three had never heard the story. It was completely new to them. Then I asked, “What does this story mean?” One girl from China answered like this, “that
the God came into the world as a baby so He could be God and be like man too. He came to us.”
As
I go about with my nose to grindstone of Christmas preparations, this simple
time with these international friends reminds me again of the REAL Christmas
story. It’s a story of re-claiming. It is a story of God becoming a God/man to
recover us from our broken selves.
Let’s
get back to the shepherds….we find them with their noses to the
grindstone. They are working hard, working
late into the night, looking down and watching sheep. And suddenly, angels appear above them. They instinctively must look up. The news they hear is a new story to them and
they suddenly have a choice. Stay and
keep watch over their jobs, families and responsibilities, i.e. keep the grind
going OR go. From the story in Luke, they left and left quickly. Suddenly the
every day requirements of life were insignificant to the new, never-heard-before
news. The Bible says they “hurried off”.
I
want to get my nose off the grindstone of Christmas activity and look up. Look up into the real story of the One who is
coming. Go run from the grindstone and
find Him and worship.
“whether we know it or not, the only question
is: are we going to let it come to us too, or are we going to resist it? Are we going to join in this movement that comes
down from heaven to earth, or are we going to close ourselves off? Christmas is coming – whether it is with us
or without us depends on each and every one of us. Advent creates people, new people in
Advent. Look up, you whose gaze is fixed
on this earth, who are spellbound by the little events and changes on the face
of the earth. Look up, your redemptions
is drawing near. Wait and something
quite new will break over you: God will come.”
Bonhoeffer advent sermon, 1933
