Electric Circuit Rider

As the new year begins, I’d like to thank all of you who read this blog – for reading it! I frankly never believed that anyone would.

In the Prairie Home Companion Halloween program several years ago, a no-nonsense librarian goes down the stairs into the dark basement of the Lake Woebegone Library at the end of the day on Halloween and is confronted by the ghost of an author of one of the books that is stored in the basement. He begs her to put his book back on the shelves. No one has read it since 1906. “A Reader”, he cries, “What I need is a Reader! I can’t exist without a reader!”

That’s why Victorian authors often addressed the people who picked up their books and articles as “Dear Reader”.

You “Dear Readers” keep writers writing.

I majored in Psychology in college. As every Psych student soon discovers, the discipline at that level is not about why and how your parents warped your psyche, it’s a lot more about why and how rats learn to run through mazes.

What a guy named Skinner discovered is that if you reward a rat for doing something like approaching a string hanging from the roof of a cage, you could eventually teach him to do very complex things like ringing a bell or opening a door. He also discovered that the learning lasted longer and worked better if the rat was not rewarded every time he did what he was supposed to, but maybe every third time – or even randomly.

I admit that years of preaching have accustomed me to almost instant feedback for what I write (for better or for worse). And I’ve very seldom been able to sit down and write things for which I probably will not get any feedback at all.

A blog is an interesting medium for a writer, however. The good folks at Blog.com provide their writers with a cleverly designed bar graph showing how many people visited the site in the past week. It’s cleverly designed because even two or three look like a lot. But even people who land on the site by accident and immediately click off encourage me.

And every once in awhile someone will actually tell me that he or she read something on my blog; I am deeply grateful for that. Thank you.

I’d also like to thank my friend Ron Dauphin, Sr. Pastor of
Olmsted Community Church, who encouraged me to begin this blog and gave me insight about how and why to do it. Also, my niece Sarah Dopp, whose blog never fails to be interesting and challenging, and who is always offering ways to make things better. I need to go to her school more often. I also get encouragement from my colleague Dianne Covault’s blog, whose musings on ministry open my eyes to the meaning of what we are doing and why. Finally, thanks to my friend Larry Poelma whose note at the bottom of his Christmas letter will keep me blogging through 2009!  

“Wait over there”. Most of us have been directed at some time or another to stand in a line or sit in an indestructible plastic chair with some old magazines on the table beside it in order to wait for something so important to us that we were willing to put up with the indignity or the boredom of having to wait in a place we found less than appealing. It may have been the doctor’s office, the license bureau, an airport, or a repair shop. It wasn’t just that we had to wait, but we had to wait in a certain place. We couldn’t move, because if we did, we might lose our chance to do whatever it is that we want to do. We had to be in the room or in the building when our name was called.

We always have to wait someplace.

Where are you waiting for Christmas? Where should we wait for Christmas?

We know where Mary and Joseph waited for Christmas – a place called
Bethlehem. Sometimes when we are singing that Christmas carol written 150 years ago by Phillips Brooks we go there.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

I suspect that the hopes and fears of all your years are met wherever you are waiting for Christmas tonight. There is something about Christmas that brings it all together. Christmas certainly brings it all back. All those Christmases past. The faces of all the people with whom we used to celebrate Christmas swim back into our memories, many of them have been dead longer than some people we know have been alive. Some are dead, but haven’t been for long, and we miss them terribly. Others have just moved so far away and have other lives and we just don’t see them at Christmas anymore.

I guess you could say that on Christmas Eve many of us wait for Christmas in the past. The ghost of Christmas past comes to us like he came to Ebenezer Scrooge and carries us back through the years.  And maybe we see, for a moment, who we were and where we were headed and some of us through the years have taken wrong turns and others right turns and we have turned out the way we are, one way or another.

Maybe, again, like Scrooge, we are visited by the ghost of Christmas yet-to-be. Maybe we imagine our children and our grandchildren growing up and wondering what the world will be like at Christmas 2025 or 2050. Hopes and fears, indeed!

Where are you waiting for Christmas?

We can’t get to Bethlehem this year, except in our imaginations. But there is another carol that I believe describes where we are waiting – we are waiting in the silent night.

We wait for Christmas in the silent night. And that is right where we need to be. If you were to see an angel tonight and ask the angel where you should wait for Christmas, I’m sure the angel would say, “Wait over there – right there – in silence – in whatever silence you are in.”

Because, again, as the carol says:

How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n;
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.

You see, Christmas always comes to you in the silent night. That’s why I’m glad that the song always begins with the words: “Silent night” before it says “Holy Night”.

The Lord knows it’s not a holy night in many places. It’s not a holy night in Baghdad, or in the Sudanese province of Darfur. It’s not a holy night at the mall, although thank God, it’s now silent, waiting for the doors to burst open Friday morning for the after Christmas sales. So it’s a silent night.

The good news is that it’s the gift that makes the night holy. The gift that comes in the silence whether it is the silence of bitterness or disbelief or even of death; the gift is given.

I discovered recently that there is another verse in the original version of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” that I never heard sung. It immediately follows that verse I just quoted. It goes:

Where children pure and happy pray to the blessèd Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.

When the LORD restored the fortunes of
Zion, we were like those who dream. Psalm 126:1

The armies of Iraq and Iran have often clashed. In the sixth century B.C., Iraq (then called Babylon) was the world’s greatest empire. Early in that century, the Babylonians conquered Judah and destroyed Jerusalem. As was their policy, they took the best and the brightest Jews back home with them to improve the Babylonian economy.

But about 7 decades later, the Persian Empire (located in present-day Iran), challenged the Babylonians to battle – and won. Their policy was to let people live where they wanted and worship as they wanted, as long as they respected the Emperor and paid their taxes. So, the new ruler of the world, Darius, decreed that the Jews could go home, if they wanted.

Their first reaction was Psalm 126.

“Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.”

Millions of African- Americans felt like election night, this year, was like a dream. A black man was elected the President of the United States. The day they tore down the Berlin Wall more than 20 years ago, the people of East Germany were filled with laughter and they shouted for joy.

Sometimes history hits us in the nose with terrible events like Pearl Harbor or 9/11/01. But sometimes, the unexpected historical event is filled with hope and grace. Considering human nature, the first kind of  surprise is not all that surprising. The second is downright miraculous.