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There it lay, splayed out across the dining room floor like a giant puzzle. We had only recently re-acquired the table that had belonged to Tom's parents. Our daughter Sarah had used it in her first apartment and for several years thereafter. It had gone with her through four moves until this last one, when she and her husband bought their new house and no longer had room for it.
The table had sentimental value, so it came here to live out its life. It was like an old friend, the operative word being old. It's age, accompanied by the loosening of its joints over the years and moves had made it much too rickety for the kind of daily use that would now be demanded, so Tom, not to be deterred from a challenge, went to work dismantling the legs and frame in order to re-glue and press back into place the joinery.
One evening as he was working on the table, I was practicing my trumpet for playing on Christmas Eve. We were only feet apart really as the two of us were each working at our crafts. Along about the time I got to the lyric and peaceful "Silent Night" Tom had reached the point of hammering the newly glued dowels of the table legs into place within the frame.
Silent night... BANG! holy night... BANG! all is calm, all is bright... BANG, BANG, BANG!!!
It was jarring... and almost comical in its timing, but in a way, it was also all too poignant.
Everything about celebrating Christmas in this fallen world is poignant.
We joyfully celebrate the baby who comes to bring light and life. Yet the life He brings comes at the expense of a most brutal death, freely giving up His life for ours. Tears of joy mingle with grief at the sacrifice, so necessary, so costly, and yet, so often unappreciated.
We sing carols and hymns resounding with the word comfort, and yet, the lives of so many are full of difficulty and pain, hardship and strife. There will be those greeting December 25th with hearts burdened over fear, anxiety... sorrow. Perhaps in that emotional poverty they may be prompted to ask, "Where is the comfort in that?"
We know the answer to that question, don't we. The comfort is in the baby. The comfort IS the baby. He has promised never to leave us or to forsake us. He walks with us through our every difficulty. He stands with us in every fire. HE is our comfort and joy in this fallen world. HE is our certain hope for the perfect peace that awaits all believers when the pain and sorrow of this world is no more.
Jesus has compassion for us and for all we now experience in this sin-filled world. He grieves with us and for us over all manner of difficulties sin has brought into our lives. He gets it, because He voluntarily became one of us. He has experienced it all first-hand.
Comfort is one of those words, one of those concepts that can really only be understood, grasped fully, by its inverse. Light and darkness. Heat and cold. Comfort and discomfort. They are defined as much by what they are not as by what they are. Comfort is felt most acutely when pain or sorrow have had their way with us. In that respect, comfort is deep and abiding, and oh, so precious.
You and I needn't experience anything more than the sin that permeates our lives to feel that true and abiding comfort that only Jesus brings. We were lost. We were helpless and hopeless. A people walking in darkness. Dead in our trespasses and sins.
Discomfort was all we knew, that is... until Jesus came... bringing that light and life... that hope and joy. That comfort. That comfort that will never leave us, even when our nights are not so silent. Even, and especially, when all in this world or in this life is not calm or particularly bright.
We know comfort. We understand it. We grasp it deep within our souls. It is found in a person. In no one else but Jesus.
Let not your heart be troubled. Comfort comes.
God rest ye merry, Gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay. Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray. O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy. O tidings of comfort and joy.
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