Month: December 2016

Clark Griswold, me, and discovering the joy of Advent

Published by Daniel on December 15, 2016

This week, churches around the world lit the third candle of Advent—the candle of joy. This joy is based on the fact that after centuries of promise, Messiah has come at last.

One of my guilty Christmas pleasures is watching the movie, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” In it, Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) does all he can to create the joy of an old-fashioned “Griswold Family Christmas.” He prepares in advance. He makes his plans, calculations, and formulas. He pursues the perfect gift for the family (one he clearly can’t afford). He longs to give everyone a holiday as perfect as those he remembers from childhood.

But it’s a comedy, so of course his plans never work. His perfect yard display won’t light up. His perfect Christmas tree won’t fit in the house, and becomes a firework due to a cat and a short in the lights. His perfect family time is disrupted by difficult in-laws as well as his uninvited Cousin Eddie and his, um, dog Snots. His perfect gift falls through after his Christmas bonus morphs into an annual membership in the Jelly-of-the-Month club. And then the whole holiday literally goes up flames when a gas fireball explodes from his sewer. The season is ruined.

I have developed a deep bond with Clark Griswold. I think I have finally figured out why.

I am Clark Griswold.

Throughout December I try so hard to create the joy of the perfect Christmas. I put up a real tree before the first TV Christmas special, because a real tree is at least three times more Christmas-y than a fake one. I travel to Eastern Washington not only because my family is there, but also because their usual snowy forecast is far more Christmas-y than Portland’s rainy one. I have carols playing all the time. I even dress all Christmas-y, daily wearing one of my silly Christmas hats, ties, or T-shirts.

No doubt about it: I deeply desire that perfect Christmas.

But, like Clark Griswold, I find that things never turn out as I’d hoped. Plans still fail, relationships still go haywire, and Christmas is not always the happiest holiday. In fact, if we expect it to be, we may end up depressed and joyless. Because Christmas is not always joyful for everyone, and may in fact be painful for some.

Some people have experienced the death of a loved one, or a gut-punch of the worst possible news. Others are grieving not what they’ve lost, but what they’ve never had—good health, a loving family, a real home. In the cold darkness of December, depression can chill the warmth of the season.

So the problem is that the idea of a perfect Christmas is too all-or-nothing: If everything is not 100% flawless, then it’s all a bust.

However, true joy is based not on perfection or lack of pain, but on the fact that Jesus has come to reconcile humanity with God. So the joy of Advent is not achieved through careful planning or formulas. It is simply there, waiting for us to turn away from the busy-ness of the Christmas season and embrace it.

Advent does not erase all of our loneliness and sorrows; instead it points to the one who came to heal and redeem them.

C.S. Lewis spent much of his pre-Christian life trying to recapture that fleeting feeling he called “joy.” Yet when he met Jesus, his goal changed. He stopped pursuing joy and started pursuing Jesus, who (Lewis discovered) is able to fulfill every need and desire.

As we celebrate the joy of Advent, I urge you to remember that this joy is for everyone—especially those who mourn, those who have suffered, those who do not feel joyful. Let us welcome the one who traded a heavenly throne for a lowly manger. He came to seek and save the lost, and to set all things right.

Maybe not today, but one day.

Last Christmas, I officially passed the torch on to my nephews to go out and find our personal “Griswold Family Christmas Tree.”

Finding the hope of advent in the darkest corners of humanity

Published by Daniel on December 6, 2016

For week two of Advent, the theme is hope.

In 2016, the world seems dark and filled with conflict. War and violence are common; our hearts ache with uncertainty and loss. We take sides against each other, both literally and figuratively.

But it is in this darkness that hope shines brightest.

In the 2006 movie Children of Men, the world faces a bleak, hopeless future. For unexplained reasons, humanity has become infertile. No baby has been born in eighteen years. The world, fractured by despots and terrorists, has descended into chaos. The human species is being wiped out by attrition and war.

Then, amazingly, a woman becomes pregnant. Like the infertility, this event is unexplained.

At the climax, a fierce battle rages outside as the woman, hiding in a decrepit building, gives birth. A miracle baby is born.

Furtively the protagonist escorts her out, but the fighters begin to notice the baby. The shooting dies down; the air becomes still. The protector, woman, and child pass through a gauntlet of stunned silence. Peace falls as a sliver of hope returns to the world.

It’s a nativity story, if you will, set in a dystopian world. A world not unlike our own.

In the summer of 1914, Great Britain and its allies engaged Germany and the Central Powers in World War I. Many Allied soldiers enlisted to help fight “the war to end all wars,” which was predicted to be over by Christmas.

Gradually the combat spread 400 miles along Europe’s western front. But by mid-December, this front had reached a stalemate.

In the freezing cold, the two forces dug in—in some spots barely a hundred feet apart. Close enough for eye contact. The trenches were flooded with water, waste, and misery.

But by Christmas Eve 1914, the war’s end was nowhere in sight. The hope of a swift and glorious victory was gone. Lice, squalor, and trench-foot were the norm. One careless moment could prove fatal. They say you never hear the shot that gets you.

As the rest of the world celebrated the hope of Christmas, death and despair hung over the trenches. The western front was at its darkest.

Then something remarkable happened. From the German trenches came the sound of singing in the frigid air:

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht—

Alles schläft, einsam wacht.

Nur das traute hochheilige Paar,

Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,

Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!

The Allies didn’t know German, but they knew the tune. Slowly they added their voices in English:

Silent night, holy night—

All is calm, all is bright.

Round yon virgin mother and child,

Holy infant so tender and mild,

Sleep in heavenly peace!

Then a British guard saw a shocking sight: a German soldier making a suicide walk. Holding a small Christmas tree lit by candles, he crossed over to the British trench and offered up a warm “Merry Christmas.”

At first it was thought a trick, but one by one the British soldiers climbed out their trenches and laid down their arms. German soldiers did the same. Across no-man’s land the two sides shook hands, traded chocolate and cigarettes, and chatted about better times. They helped one another bury their dead. Even a soccer match broke out.

Not long before, these men had been aiming their guns at one another, shooting to kill.

But on Christmas Eve, this stretch of the western front was silent. A glimmer of hope had returned.

Each year during Advent, I remember this Christmas Truce of 1914.[1] I am amazed to think that two millennia after Christ came, his birth could still bring peace in the middle of a world war.

As long as humans have existed we have tried to enforce peace by might and coercion. But it is always short-lived and superficial—just a shadow of the peace Jesus brings. We cannot push back the night; all we can do is invite him to invade our darkness.

In this week of Advent, I encourage you to reflect on the power and hope of the incarnation. Our dark world needs hope. Our hurting hearts need hope. Just remember that hope comes only from Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

[1] For details on the Christmas Truce, see http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/christmas-truce-of-1914

Why we need Advent now more than ever

Published by Daniel on December 2, 2016

Advent—beginning with the first of four Sundays before Christmas—is usually my favorite time of year. I start anticipating it around June 21, when the days start getting shorter. I love the lights and colors, the smells of Christmas trees and warm fresh-baked cookies, the sounds of bells and carols, and the sight of Rudolph and Charlie Brown running across my television screen. But there’s a deeper reason for my love of Christmas.

For years, I have wrestled with my broken life, and Advent is a season to remember how God stepped into humanity’s story—my story—and lived among us for the sole purpose of saving us. Have you ever suddenly realized that you find more excitement in the days leading up to Christmas than the actual day itself? That is Advent. The “secular” Christmas season of anticipating Santa Claus is merely a shadow-like reflection of what Advent is. Advent is waiting, knowing Jesus will come. So for me, Advent is a reflection and celebration of the magnitude of Jesus’s birth, and what it means in the mess that is my life.

Yet this year, despite my love of Advent, the temptation has been strong to just sit in the darkness and be sad over a world gone mad.

I tried to start this blog on the first Sunday of Advent, because I wanted to give a warm, meaningful introduction to this season of hope.

Yet no words came.

I was in a sour, bleak mood. This year has felt like an episode of the Twilight Zone – or, more accurately, like the overall plot of “The Walking Dead”: There is no way this story can end well.

Like many people, I have been reeling from a painfully long and ugly presidential election which divided families, friends, and even the body of Christ. I celebrated the day after, not because of the outcome but because it was finally, mercifully over. Then came weeks of riots and accusations, and as if those weren’t enough, the election that will not go away is about to be stretched out at least another few weeks because an official recount was requested in three states. The uncertainty continues.

As I continued trying to blog, a Somali refugee plowed his car into a crowd of students at Ohio State University, then jumped out of his car and began stabbing everyone he could before he was shot dead by law enforcement.

Yet another tragedy. Yet another reason why I could find no heartening words to say.

The hope of Advent seems pushed out by a dark, broken world, extinguished by the pain of daily life.

Perhaps it’s just the cumulative weight of 2016 in my psyche. Granted, there have been many things to be thankful for in this year; I can’t pretend there were no blessings. But it has been a year unlike any other in my lifetime. Globally we are overwhelmed by issues and evils, knowing that no one – not even the talking heads on TV or the self-proclaimed experts on social media – can solve them. Nationally we are shattered by politics, nursing suspicions and firing accusations against our closest friends and family members because of who we did or didn’t vote for. And personally I celebrated my 50^th birthday this year, which reanimated deep questions about life’s meaning and God’s plan.

I have felt so many raw emotions and scary uncertainties this year that I just want to tap out for a while.

So instead of anticipating Advent with joy, I did so with numbness and dread—as if it were just another task to get through.

As I watched the horrible events at Ohio State scroll across my television screen, I got into a pretty frosty (bad seasonal pun intended) debate with myself over whether it was worth it even to get a tree. But I knew that if I didn’t, I’d keep debating the question and be unable to move on to other things – like finishing this blog.

So despite my Grinch-like heart, I ventured out.

Barely thinking or caring about anything, I drove to a nondescript tree lot, grabbed the first decent tree I saw, secured it atop my car, and headed home. Within an hour I had fixed it in a stand, strung it with lights, and thrown some decorations on it.

And although my initial intent was simply to get that chore out of the way, the result changed me.

In the daytime, my tree was just an odd, temporary living room decoration, giving off barely visible light. But as darkness fell, it became truly beautiful.

I sat in the warm glow of my new Christmas tree, a glow which brought remarkable contrast to my darkened living room. And I began to feel the hope that Advent brings.

That morning I had been reading Ann Voskamp’s new book, and now one sentence she wrote explained my experience: “The way you always find the light in the dark is to make your hand reach out.”[1] My sparkling-new Christmas tree was suddenly the symbol of Advent for me. It was light invading the darkness. But I needed to reach for it, and invite the hope of Advent into my own heavy world.

I am grateful I chose to go buy a tree despite my sour disposition. God used that tree to show me that we remember Advent not despite the world’s darkness, but because of it. The anticipation of Advent shines brightest in a dark world; it is when the world is darkest that the anticipation is most needed.

In 2017, there is no guarantee of a better year. We will still be living in a dark, fallen world. And that is exactly why Advent is more important than ever. The world’s darkness is exactly why we must remember Advent—which holds within it the anticipation of Jesus’s birth, the power of his sacrifice, and the hope of knowing that one day he will come again.

[1] Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way, p. 57.