He was more than an hour from the office and still frustrated,
still muttering to himself about the fool state of his life.
He had a right.
It was just a couple of hours ago that his truck had died on
him, requiring a tow to the repair shop, forcing him to rent a car in order
to travel the several hours he needed to for the weekend.
Note: The following is the first of three devotions on the
Nativity to be published in the Louisiana Baptist Message in celebration of
the Christmas season. This devotional was written by LBM Associate Editor C.
Lacy Thompson.
He was more than an hour from the office and still frustrated,
still muttering to himself about the fool state of his life.
He had a right.
It was just a couple of hours ago that his truck had died on
him, requiring a tow to the repair shop, forcing him to rent a car in order
to travel the several hours he needed to for the weekend.
And that was not all.
No, that was on top of the other aggravations and circumstances
from the previous two weeks – seemingly a new one each and every single
day, he thought.
Of course, he tried not to think of it too much. That was too
frustrating. That was the times when he felt the temptation simply to get in
his vehicle and drive – away, somewhere, anywhere, as long as it was anywhere
else, anywhere new.
He knew he never would do that – but thinking about it
felt good sometimes.
Instead, here he was, driving in the dark, heading back to
all the circumstance and frustration, wondering how he would work through it
all, resolve it all, deal with it.
He found himself on a black stretch of road, the wind rushing
in through the open window, the only sound of the night.
The road was newly-paved and as black as the sky. There were
no other cars in sight for this few-mile stretch. He was alone.
“Just my luck,” he heard himself mutter. “In
my tunnel, there is not even the light of an oncoming train.”
Then, he saw it.
To his left sat one of the few houses on this reach of road.
And suddenly, there one was – festooned with Christmas lights of who knows
how many colors, blinking and non-blinking, red, green, yellow, white, blue.
The lights grabbed ones attention as the house came into
view from behind the tree line. And as he passed in his rented car full of frustration,
the night driver noticed the decorations more closely.
A lighted Nativity scene sat center stage in the front yard.
“Faith is standing in the darkness, and a hand is there,
and we take it,” Frederick Buechner has written.
It is a comforting thought.
After all, there is no disputing that much of this life is
lived in darkness – the darkness of frustration and circumstance and details
and troubles and pain and sorrow.
Too many times, it is too easy to come to oneself and realize
how long it has been since one has laughed or awoke with expectation or ended
a day feeling a meaningful contribution had been made.
Too many times, it is too hard to imagine a day without difficulty,
without aggravation, without some form of personalized trouble to face and overcome.
“Life is difficult,” Scott Peck wrote in the opening
line of his best-selling book, “The Road Less Traveled.”
True – but how many times is it tempting to add another
word to Pecks analysis?
“Life is always difficult.”
“Life is too difficult.”
“Life is supremely difficult.”
And so on.
How easy it is to find oneself driving through the dark roads
of life, muttering beneath ones breath, lost in frustration.
How hard it is to find solace in Buechners definition
of faith sometimes – because sometimes, there simply seems to be no hand
there.
Even Buechner understood this.
Elsewhere, he wrote, “Faith is the word that describes
the direction our feet start moving when we find that we are loved.
“Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to
guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.”
If one is honest, one must honestly say that faith so often
feels that way – a grope in the dark, a desperate reach for contact.
Is there a hand there?
Or is it that life has grown so wearisome that one simply cannot
focus enough to find it, to feel its closeness?
It is enough to lead one to despair – and doubt –
and resignation.
It is enough to cause one to want to climb into the vehicle
and turn it away from whatever life has been and drive straight into whatever
else there might be – away from circumstance and happenstance and troublesome
kids and frustrating co-workers and due-date bills and broken trucks and wrecked
cars and cracked slabs and busted water heaters and … and …
Instead, one finds oneself in a car on a dark stretch of road,
surprised by a house of lights, by a neon-like Nativity scene.
And it is a reminder.
And it is a sign.
A child has been born in the night.
Something has happened.
Everything has changed.
“Whether there were 10 million angels there or just the
woman herself and her husband, when the child was born, the whole course of
history was changed,” Buechner also has written.
“That is a fact as hard and blunt as any fact. … It
is impossible to conceive of how differently world history would have developed
if that child had not been born.”
But there is more, Buechner adds.
“In terms of faith, much more must be said, because for faith, the birth
of the child into the darkness of the world made possible not just a new way
of understanding life but a new way of living life.”