Of Bears and Penguins

Advent Return: Day something or other:

When I last left you, I hit "Publish post," coughed the little cough I had mentioned, and went to bed. I woke up to the illness that came from nowhere and knocked me on my backside. There were aches, there was congestion and stuffiness, there was upset tummy, there was fever and chills. So I armed myself with Tylenol Cold, and because medicine that can cause loopiness always does, I poured myself into bed, and slept inbetween watching TV on hulu.com and reading a page at a time of Julia and Julia. I couldn't begin to imagine what to write in way of an advent reflection, so I just pulled the covers over my head and slept it off.

Today, I returned to work, with a little cough in tow, and worked through the pile on my desk. Page corrections to be checked against proofs, author corrections to be transferred, packages to confirm receipt of.

This whole dark at 4 p.m. thing is really tough for me. My body really is wired to think, "it's dark, it must be time for bed," which is what I got ready for until I looked at my cell phone and saw it was 6:49. Needless to say, not bedtime.

The office is completely bedecked in cheer - there is a Christmas Tree in the lobby, garlands wrapped round the bannisters, there seems to be a small tree popping out from each cluster of cubicles. Scuttlebutt in neighboring cubicles revolved around "Was it fair or unfair that someone won twice in the prize drawings at the Company Christmas party last week?" Unanimous verdict: Unfair, the unlucky drawee should have declined the second prize and told them to draw someone else.

It's nearly impossible to avoid the trimmings, the trappings, the lights, and the oddly disembodied carols that come lilting through the speakers at the mall. There are the comments about running up the credit card so that everyone can be happy at Christmas, and not paying it down till Spring. There are the bake sales for local charity, and gifts for the poor, and everyone seems wound as tightly as a toy monkey.

So much of it, to my ears, carries the phrase, "This year, I'm going to make it right, this year, I'll be good to the people I should be good to, this year, I'll do all I can and make it this one day of wonder, I'll work a little harder, a little longer."

And trust me, I'm not harshing on being good to folks at the holidays, or giving to charity or anything like that, I'm just a little curious and puzzled as to why these 25 days seem to ratchet up our collective awareness that maybe we should give to others. There are after all, 340 other days that we could spread the collective holiday madness over, and mabye take a collective breath.

The answer I keep finding in my own heart is the deep compulsion we have to believe that if we work hard enough we can make it right, that it is within our power to save ourselves from the small things and the big things that hang us up. And this is ultimately completely antithetical to the incarnation of Christ, because it is His coming that says once, for all, "By grace are you saved," and that we rest in Him not by our work, but by His work on our behalf.

What a relief that the message of this time is not, "If you work a little harder, you can catch the golden ring as it spins madly by," but "Come to me, ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."

For unto us a savior has been born. A savior who asks us not to work to make ourselves right, but to submit to Him and let Him heal us, and in healing us bring greater rightness than we could e'er imagine in our doing.