Saturday, December 26, 1998

Christmas an anchor in trying times

By Lauren R. Stanley

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The past few weeks have brought about extraordinary events in our lives, events that have left our heads spinning and our hearts aching, no matter on what side of the aisle we stand.

A president impeached, a war begun and ended in four days, the roller-coaster ride of the stock markets, and, of course, Christmas.

This last one was, for many people, the most ordinary event in that two-week period, which is, in a way, a good thing.

Because God knows we need SOMEthing to anchor us in these trying times. We need something that holds us together, something that can ground us, so that even in these most divisive times, we can remember that we ARE one people, created by one God, who more than anything wants us to know how much we are loved.

The birth of the Messiah is just what we ordinary people need.

Because the birth of the Messiah is something that took place in and among and for ordinary people -- not in and among and for kings and rulers and powers and principalities, but plain old ordinary people.

Just like you and me.

When your head starts to spin anew, read again the story of this miraculous birth that took place two millennia ago in a small village in the middle of Palestine. Read again about how this child was born, not to the powerful of the empire, but to two ordinary people simply trying to live their lives in ordinary ways.

Read again how the angels appeared to shepherds living in the fields with their sheep. If shepherds aren't ordinary people, who are?

Read again how this child's ordinary parents took him to the temple to be circumcised and named, and how an ordinary man named Simeon praised God for sending this child into the world to be the salvation of the Lord. And how an ordinary woman named Anna also praised the child "to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem."

And then read how this child's ordinary parents took him home to their ordinary village and raised him up in an ordinary family.

God intervened in the lives of extremely ordinary people for one purpose only: to assure us that the one who created us out of love still was -- and is -- desperately in love with us.

Pretty extraordinary, eh?

For those of us who are living ordinary lives and consider ourselves pretty ordinary in the greater scheme of things, it is the story of this Messiah that grounds us when extraordinary events set our heads spinning and cause our hearts to ache, no matter on which side of the aisle we stand.

Because when our heads do start to spin and our hearts do start to ache, the first loss we feel is one of control. WE'RE not the ones making these momentous decisions, even though they have momentous affects on our lives.

Suddenly, when we feel we have lost control, being ordinary people doesn't feel very good.

But ...

If we remember that it was to ORDINARY people that God appeared -- in dreams and burning bushes and out on the plains on long, cold winter nights -- and that it was to ORDINARY people that God's son was born, well, then, being ordinary isn't so bad after all.

In fact, when we look anew at the Christmas story, we realize that it is ordinary people whom God asks to do extraordinary things.

Ordinary people repeatedly are asked to be fearless -- "Do not be afraid, for I am with you," God constantly proclaims. Ordinary people repeatedly are asked to trust, to have faith, and to go forth into the world acting on the love that God shows us.

Lest we think that God stopped asking ordinary people to do extraordinary things by the time the Bible was completed, listen again to the Double Commandment: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. That commandment was given to ALL people, high and low, mighty and powerless, then and now.

It may not be easy for us to follow that commandment, especially when we are questioning where God is in our lives and whether God even exists, and especially when we encounter people who are hard to like, much less love.

But it is not impossible to follow that commandment, either. It isn't impossible to love God with all our being -- simply extraordinary. It isn't impossible for us to love our neighbors as ourselves -- simply extraordinary.

When we read anew the story of Christmas, we realize that God is asking us, ordinary people, to claim the extraordinary and make it part of our daily lives. God is asking us, in the midst of our very ordinariness, to take part in his extraordinary plans for us.

Sometimes, when our lives seem consumed by extraordinary events over which we have no control, we need something that we see as ordinary -- like Christmas -- to help us remember that the truly extraordinary events in our lives are the ones that come from God, and that we, as ordinary people, are called to make them happen.

(The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. Readers may write to her care of Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 790 National Press Building, Washington, D.C., 20045.)

(c) 1998, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.