“I am doing a new thing,” God said. “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” The weak things of the world will shame the strong. The foolish things of the world will shame the wise. And the King of Heaven will be born in the muck and filth of a stable, attended by goats and jackasses and hardscrabble shepherds. The hope of Christmas is that God has done a new thing—that he has made a home among people who have a hard time feeling at home here themselves.
In the midst of ambition and striving and disappointment and homework and housework, it all seems very unlikely. As Chesterton wrote, “our peace is put in impossible things.” So rather than wrestle with impossibility, we enfeeble our expectations. We reduce Christmas to an experience we can stage-manage, something we can make marvelous for our children, something we can do something about. That sort of Christmas can’t begin to bear the weight of our longings.
Let’s all remind each other of what we often forget: God is forever at work, bringing wild impossibility to bear on the things we struggle to keep under our own control. Here’s to something new, even impossible this season and in the new year.
Jonathan Rogers is the author of The Terrible Speed of Mercy, one of the finest biographies of Flannery O’Connor we've ever read. His other books include the Wilderking Trilogy–The Bark of the Bog Owl, The Secret of the Swamp King, and The Way of the Wilderking–as well as The World According to Narnia and a biography of Saint Patrick. He has spent most of his adult life in Nashville, Tennessee, where he and his wife Lou Alice are raising a houseful of robustious children.
10 Comments
Mark
All I can say to that is Amen!!
Thomas
Thank you for this post! Merry Christmas to all of you!
Lisa
Short, but rich. Thank you, Jonathan. Merry Christmas to all, and here’s a cuppa tea raised to the impossible!!
Chinwe
“God is forever at work, bringing wild impossibility to bear on the things we struggle to keep under our own control. Here’s to something new, even impossible this season and in the new year.”
Thanks for this Jonathan. Help my unbelief, dear Lord!
Cara Strickland
Thank you.
This is filled with much-needed hope.
Elizabeth Bransom
Thank you. This resonated perfectly with my devotions this morning after a harried Christmas Day. The Rabbit Room has a way of bringing me out of myself and back to the cross.
Joanne Hordyk
So rather than wrestle with impossibility, we enfeeble our expectations. We reduce Christmas to an experience we can stage-manage, something we can make marvelous for our children, something we can do something about. That sort of Christmas can’t begin to bear the weight of our longings.
Reminds me of another piece of profundity:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses
Becca
Oh, I needed this. Thank you, Jonathan.
Becky
Your words filled my heart and focused it squarely where it needs to be! Thank you
Rebekah Quinley
Can hardly believe this is the same man who just wrote about moles . . .
On a more serious note, thank you for refocusing my attention on the hope of Christ.
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