What's So Peaceful About Peace?

I hear so much talk of peace this time of year, and I cannot help but wonder where people are hanging out. Where are the sheep? Where are the stars? Where is the sweet and cooing baby Jesus to command a little silence? As far as my Christmas experience is going there might as well have been a marching band practicing on the other half of the manger, and the oboes are out of tune. The two burning candles on the Advent wreath have fallen out of their stands and are setting the carpet on fire. I can safely say that I am not experiencing much peace at the moment and either a peaceful Christmas is an illusion or its on a fast track to pass me by.

Now I must admit that I am being dramatic, but I must consider the circumstances. First there are the petty things, like how every morning I stick out my elbows and push my way onto Interstate 65 amidst dozens of people acting like they are driving their imaginary pregnant passenger to the hospital in a bumper car. This is probably the case all year long, but I have started a new job in the holiday build-up, and it is a rude awakening after the stillness of a breaking morning. I then sit at my desk and respond to a hundred or so emails and calls from edgy customers wondering where their Christmas gifts are. I once wrote a scathing letter to a manufacturer of a guitar I own because of a defect in the instrument, hoping that my words would sizzle on the page and in turn score me some kind of hand out. I was young and foolish, but it would appear what goes around comes around. We are in the throws of materialism and nothing shows the selfishness of man like people spending money. I am stressed out by the way people are spending money.

There is simply too much to do to make Christmas logistically happen. This is the busiest time of my year on every possible level. I work every day, have an engagement every night, and while this is a time for fellowship and celebration, I find myself looking for reasons to bug out. This is a time to give God glory for the intersection of mankind and the divine, yet we have so many obstacles in the way of getting there.

And then there are all the difficult things, the things that are outside of our control. This week was a week of unwelcome news, and a week of difficult lessons. I caught a glimpse of the depth of my selfishness and it hurt. At the same time our nation is fighting a war on two fronts, a war against an enemy that will never cease to exist. Democracy is failing in allied nations, civil war occurs the entire world over. Then there is the genocide in Sudan, children forced to be soldiers in Uganda, and the fact that 6,500 Africans die every day from a preventable disease. The truth of the matter is that this a world in which we have no peace, and a world that never will.

Israel, as I wrote previously, was a nation that never experienced a lasting peace. Isaiah speaks of the Messiah as the Prince of Peace, and we embrace this idea. After all, angels appeared to the shepherds below, saying, "Glory to God in the highest! Peace on Earth and good will towards men!" Our nativity scenes depict the most perfect of circumstances, carols invoke the calm, and even the high and peerless beacon of the night sky invokes a tremendous sense of purity and bliss. This picture of the birth of Christ is bursting with peaceful images and I wonder, how do I find the peace in this season?

A few nights ago I sat and watched a remarkable song cycle called “Behold the Lamb of God”. A local singer-songwriter named Andrew Peterson, along with a number of his friends, performed this telling of the birth of Christ, starting in the beginning of the Old Testament. The defining moment of the entire production is a song called “Labor of Love”, a song that is possibly the best lyrical telling of the birth of Christ I have ever heard. The song starts with the lyric, “It was not a silent night, there was blood on the ground.” And it continues:

You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town

And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother's hand to hold

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love

A “labor of pain” is far from a peaceful thought, yet the child of Mary was in fact the Prince of Peace. Even God made man was born in the pains of labor, not to mention the abject squalor of a filthy manger.

In this second week of the Advent, I consider the Prince of Peace and the obstacles placed between us and a peaceful Christmas. In a world where violence, disease, and suffering is inevitable, it is the Christ child that embodies peace. Life is not peaceful, but the presence of God is peaceful, and one day this world will experience the lasting peace the Israelites longed for, and not just for those who believe, but for the entire Earth. Wars will end, the environment will be put into balance, and selfishness will cease to exist. In the birth of Jesus and the celebration of Christmas, we are intended to experience peace, if only for a moment. As I sit here and desperately try to slow down my thoughts, I do not wish for the sweetness of this season to pass me by. I long for the Prince of Peace, and it is my sincere hope that all the weight and noise imposed upon us during the Christmas season fade away, until all we are left with is the cries of a child, and a sky full of stars.