Instead of snowfall this Christmas, Central Slovakia was blanketed in torrential downpours of rain. At 6:00 in the morning my slumber was disturbed by the aggressive trill of raindrops on the sunroof above my bed, and through out the day the rain continued to fall in varying degrees of severity. By the time the 7:00 p.m. news rolled around a good part of the region was under water. The news showed clips of bridges being submerged or hammered by runaway driftwood and disgruntled home owners or stressed-out public officials bemoaning the inconvenience of the natural disaster. But it also showed a Brittan buried by blizzards in arctic-like conditions.
My first though was: the world is ending. I’m rocking a T-shirt and light sweatshirt in the dead of winter in Central Europe, begging for snow but instead getting monsoons, while England is hammered with snow. It’s all backwards, the end is night.
But after mulling over it a while, I decided that this complete reversal of anything even remotely representing the norm is the perfect, most EPIC demonstration of Christmas. This year I’ve been into Advent, really trying to contemplate what Christmas means instead of just switching on to autopilot—you know, there was that donkey, manger, and little impromptu party in a barn in the middle of the night.
Christmas is God becoming a human—the Divine voluntarily becoming a measly mortal –and not some powerful dictator on the spot, but a little vulnerable baby. And yet from the moment of His birth EVERYTHING in the universe was turned upside down. Every rule or norm people who were trying to be good had previously followed was inverted (all that business about ‘the last being first’), All things external became very internal—basically God came, and he brought the thunda.
After hearing a story a hundred times it sort of looses it’s effect (if you let it…), it’s hard to keep the abstract real and alive. If your house or local freeway is suddenly submerged in water or surrounded by swirling, boiling eddies though, your attention is arrested and the message suddenly feels very real and concrete.
On the 26th I woke up to find the sun shining in a blue sky (for the first time in literally over a week), puffy cumulous nimbus clouds lazily drifting over the surrounding hilltops, and a pleasant chill hanging in the air. While there wasn’t any rainbow the peaceful feeling and finally calm atmosphere did have that covenant feeling of God saying, “Don’t trip, I’m not gonna’ flood you to death.” This birthday party with its sublime hydro techniques is over, order is restored. The world is not ending today, but it sure aint’ the same…
Merry Christmas!
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