So my dear mama’s just had knee surgery this past week, and during her tender recovery on the cusp of Advent, I can’t stop thinking about this & what unforgettably unfolded when I took her to NYC for Christmas just 2 years ago…
She’d never been to New York City before, and was on the cusp of turning 71.
I had to fly again for meetings in New York, after my long year of weariness and grief and loneliness, and just before they turned on all the Christmas lights.
So I give her soft, wrinkled cheek a tender kiss, slip the plane ticket into hand, and whisper “Come with me, Mama?”
We only have so many revolutions around the sun and every day is about overturning the dark.
I take her first to Strand’s Book Store–and literally have to drag her by the hand into the actual store, as she gleefully dives into all the used books just in carts out on the sidewalk. Kids in candy stores look nearly catatonic in comparison to my Mama in a bookstore. I keep whispering to her in the stacks, “Just remember–we have to figure out how to fit all these books into your carryon?”
“I’ll leave clothes behind for books,” she winks. I’m not ashamed to say how I like the way the gears in Mama’s mind turns and overturns all the things.
We only have so many revolutions around the sun and every day is about overturning the dark.
When we sit up in the balcony at the Metropolitan Opera, to watch La Boheme, the librettist lifts the roof and all the heaviness of the year with those lilting lines,
“In you I see a dream come to life–
A dream I pray always to dream!
In the depths of my soul
I tremble…
Your kisses thrill life itself.”
And I steal a glance in the dark over at my mama’s eyes glinting, her thrilling, kindling again, to life itself.
In this world, there is One heavenly dream who comes to life, to give life, a dream we pray always to dream, even in our darkest nightmare, so we wake to the Light forever, and all our weary hopes fulfilled.
Mama reaches over and pats my hand, winks.
It’s late and cold when we slip down 5th Avenue.
The 70-some foot Norway Spruce Christmas tree that’s only been freshly lit not yet even 24 hours, presiding there over Rockefeller Center and the ice skaters carving figure eights there under her twinkling limbs.
Mama, she turns and squeezes my arm, “Ain’t it all just something else, Ann?”
And I can see all the lights flickering in her eyes, just like they do in every single one of the 125 million actual human beings who will make their way this Christmas season to stand in awe at the foot of that Tree.
Then, just as we turn around, straight across from the Rockefeller tree, the whole 10 story front of Saks Fifth Avenue ignites with choreographed lights, over 700,000 programmed LED lights all flashing to the tune of Mariah Carey’s “Christmas–Baby, Please Come Home.”
Mama holds up her phone like a glowing flag and hits record and swoons a bit like everyone else standing wide-eyed there on the street, and I smile at her and the lights and all these turning constellations of grace.
But God came down and the new kingdom’s breaking in, and the revolution has begun, and nothing in this busted old world is the same.
And then the instrumental music suddenly turns to the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and the lights flash and dance and right there on 5th Avenue with thousands witnessing a light show bar none, and I catch my breath.
The instrumental music keeps directing this light extravaganza–but does anyone know the words, the words that aren’t playing, but actually accompany this song that is making all of 5th Avenue stand agape with faces turned up to the heavens, words I half expect the entire filled 5th Avenue to raise hands and begin to sing:
“Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee
God of glory, Lord of love
Hearts unfold like flow’rs before Thee
Op’ning to the Sun above
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness
drive the dark of doubt away
Give of immortal gladness
fill us with the light of day…”
And I’m thinking: There’s a dream we pray to dream
where we turn and open to the Son above
and all the dark
forever burns away.
“Mama,” I lean in. “Just before it closes–can we slip right over there into St. Patrick’s?”
The Babe will bear a cross and all the brokenness of the world, of history, of humanity, there on His bare back. What if He had never gone to the only Tree we all need this Christmas?
I point to the darkened towers of the stone church right next door of flashy Saks.
And she nods and takes my arm and we make our gentle way through the crowds of Christmas merry makers and up the stairs into the vaulted stillness of the cathedral.
The nave rises more than 100 glorious feet above us, like we can ascend to heaven–or heaven has split and come down to us.
And we catch a glimpse of it off to the side, the larger than life nativity, nestled into the side aisle of the cathedral–and in the last few moments before the cathedral closes here on the lit and full streets of New York, we draw near and sit close.
Behind the creche that is ache-waiting for the Child, I see it carved right into the stone of the cathedral walls, sculpted and alive and moving, deeply moving,
And what if He had never come? What if He had never gone to the only Tree we all need this Christmas?
What if He had never entered here and we stayed in the dark for always here? What if there was never any rescue, never any way out, never any hope of real wholeness?
But God came down and the new kingdom’s breaking in, and the revolution has begun, and nothing in this busted old world is the same.
The revolution that begins under the spinning stars of Bethlehem means relationships can turn around, prodigals can turn around, diagnosis can turn around, circumstances can turn around, injustices can turn around, the impossible can turn around.
The revolution that begins under the spinning stars of Bethlehem means relationships can turn around, prodigals can turn around, diagnosis can turn around, circumstances can turn around, injustices can turn around, the impossible can turn around.
Already now:
The revolution has begun to destroy dark’s destruction.
The revolution has begun to crush injustice’s corruptions.
The revolution has begun to wreck every disappointment’s intrusion.
Because God came to breathe this same air, everything in the world is now different.
The direction of everything is different now because of Advent and His coming:
The King of heaven has come right down and now God’s kingdom is coming right here on earth as it is in heaven.
Because a new Babe was born in Bethlehem, there is a new order born into this world!
Because the Word became flesh, the word on the street is revolutionary hope!
Because there is a new King, there is a new Way for everything!
Because the revolution has begun, all in the kingdom are finally free to begin a new vocation:
The One who bears the Cross and all the world’s brokenness for us, now gives us all this main vocation to bear His image in a broken world. The image bearers of God must always be bearing a cross.
A Christian’s vocation is always cruciformation.
To reach out with hope to the hurting,
to stretch out with a branch of peace
to the polarized, to open our arms
wide to welcome in the difficult
because the world now is entirely different.
The lights can turn all up and down 5th Avenue, and the Rockefeller Tree can draw millions.
And the choreographed light show flashing across the facade of Saks can stop the crowds slack jawed in the streets.
But the real revolution has begun in the dark of a barn, the real revolution has begun that will overturn all the regimes of darkness and sadness and brokenness, the real revolution has begun in us that keep bringing the kingdom down, that keeps turning everything around.
All the Christmas lights everywhere are but a sign of how Christ’s revolution has begun, overturning all the dark.
As we wait for a cab to take us back up 5th Avenue, Mama takes one more look over at the Rockefeller Tree and the crush of gazing site seers, and up at all the lights dancing up Saks to thundering music, and I hear her humming to the choreographed lights, that worship that underlies all of our Christmases, whether we realize it or not:
“Joyful, joyful we adore Thee
God of glory, Lord of love…
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness
drive the dark of doubt away
Giver of immortal gladness
fill us with the light of day…”
And all our chains begin to break, the dark begins to crack with light, and all us hurting begin to witness.
The signs of the dawning new Kingdom coming, because a God-man hung on a tree to whom all of history will one day gaze in worship and bow, and the cosmic overthrow of all our sadness is starting already now.
All the Christmas lights everywhere are but a sign of how Christ’s revolution has begun, overturning all the dark.
Merry Revolutionary Christmas.
***
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here.
Come let Jesus touch our broken relationships & heal us & reconcile us with His PEACE.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning 25 Christmas Devotionals for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019 (pop-up tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
