a christmas story

What started as a normal Saturday, made a detour.  I was walking into church when my on-call phone beeped. Minutes later I was driving into down winding country roads.  I walked into Fred and Anna's home, minutes after Fred passed away.  I was halfway across the living room when Anna wrapped her petite body around me and sobbed.  After a while we made our way to their bed room and sat on either side of Fred.  As we waited for her sons to arrive, Anna began to share stories for their sixty+ year marriage and their childhoods on the other side of the world.  Some of the stories were filled with happy memories.  Some made us weep.

Fred was one of nine children.  One brother was killed in the war.  One sister died from injuries when bombs hit their village.  Anna  was a few years younger and lived a couple hundred miles away.  She talked about soldiers invading her village.  About beatings and rape and murder.  With the men off fighting several mothers decide to flee to safety.  Anna's mother wrapped her children in blankets and laid her baby in a buggy that she and her neighbor pushed through the snow.  Two solders stopped them mid hike.  One soldier demanded that Anna's mother remove her boots and give them to him.  He tried them on but realized they were way too small.  This angered him.  He threw them back at her yelling "stupid woman!"  Anna realized that if the boots had fit the soldier, her mother would have been left barefoot in the snow.   

The story got worse.  Anna's baby brother died toward the end of the hike to the next village.   Anna watched her mother lay the baby on a table and wash his emaciated body.  She remembered her mother saying "This is so much better.  He will never have to suffer again."
       
And now it was Anna's time to say that as she looked at Fred.  "He will never have to suffer again."  In the midst of Anna's grief she realized that Fred would get to meet her little brother for the first time in Heaven.  She talked about how glad she was Fred was no longer in pain, that he had poured so much love into their family.  She couldn't wait for the resurrection.

I drove home with a heavy heart, trying to understand a world where husbands die, sons are sent to war, where women stand barefoot in the snow and lose their babies.  I tried to wrap my head around experiencing that level of loss and grief and still having rich, funny stories to tell and a warm heart full of love.  It felt confusing to carry Anna's story home through blinking Christmas lights and Christmas carols.

But beyond Silent Night and Oh Little Town of Bethlehem I thought of the whole Christmas Story.  The part about all baby boys under the age of two being killed, about weeping and mourning and the holy family escaping in the night through the desert.  How in a world "dark with the misapprehension of God"  an angel said to shepherds, "do not be afraid.  I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people.  11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord."

This Christmas we need a Savior as much as Bethlehem did.  This Christmas we need Hope as much as we did in 1942.  This Christmas, once again we are given Good News of Great Joy.  

Oh come, oh come Emmanuel....