Streams of Mercy

Every year I read something new that deepens my understanding of the Savior’s birth we are celebrating today. Maggie Alsup’s “Love’s Defiant Song,” from the current edition of The Presbyterian Outlook touched my heart as I celebrate this special day this year.

She speaks of one of her favorite Christmas carols – “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, “ and shares that it was originally penned by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1863. He wrote this poem with the narrator hearing Christmas bells during the Civil War, giving words to the feeling of what it was to hear the bells ringing out amid war and hate.

“And in despair, I bowed my head;

There is no peace on earth, I said;

For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth good-will to men.”

She goes on to say, “In our lives these days, we have despair. We experience hatred. We have war. These make it hard for us to find the peace that God offer to us. We get weighed down with the grief and heartbreak of it all. It is as if the world around us these days is mocking the peace and joy this season offers.”

She recalls the words of another poet, Madeleine L’Engle, “Love still takes the risk of birth - God chooses to be born into this mess. God chooses to take on human flesh and enter into the chaos of the heartache of our world – choosing to be with us in it all. God enters into the chaos and sits with us.”

This is “Love’s Defiant Song” - this coming to be “God with us” in Jesus Christ – not a Christmas “present,” but the gift of Christmas presence – Immanuel, God with us, forever more! The message of Christmas is that in the chaos and mess of our lives; in the joys and burdens; in the grief and pain and tragedy, God is with us. God comes close, to love us more fully and to make all of life holy and filled with the presence of “God-with -us” forevermore.

Alsup goes on to say that it’s more than this. “God comes and sits with me. And God comes and challenges me to do something. To not be passive in my waiting. That I have to get up and do. That I must do my best, whatever that looks like, to work against the powers of the world, for love takes risks. That is what God did when God took on the form of a child and lived among us all those years ago.”

She closes with these words: “I am reminded that even in this chaos, ‘love still takes the risk of birth” … and my heart sings! I find joy and comfort in this love and the glimmers of this love around me. I find myself defiant as I sing my favorite Christmas carol. I throw back my head and proclaim this day:

“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;

God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

I’m thankful for the gift of “Love’s Defiant Song” and Maggie Alsup’s writing this Christmas day! May we learn to sing “Love’s Defiant Song and sing it all our days!

Be blessed this Christmas day and ever more!

Elizabeth