It was a pretty typical Sunday School class Christmas dinner in the meeting room of a moderate steak house overlooking the river. We were wrapping it up, singing one of my favorite carols, “Silent Night” when suddenly Bill just sank back into his chair weeping. He signaled that everything was okay and so we continued and closed the evening out. Afterwards, I grabbed another couple cups of coffee and sat down across from Bill, and he told his story.
He was a Prisoner of War in Germany during World War II. It was Christmas Eve and the prisoners had made the best Christmas they could and were singing “Silent Night”. He heard the bombers flying over, an almost nightly occurrence as they continued to their targets of rail yards or munitions factories. But suddenly it was terribly different as the bombs began to fall on their POW camp. Bill never know why the mistake happened, but suddenly, years later, he was back in the cold terror of that night in the POW camp instead of the comfortable, warm restaurant beside the beautiful river. “Silent Night” was never the same for him.
We’ll never be able to be prepared in advance, but bombs will find a way to fall on our “Silent Night”. The empty chair at the table for Christmas dinner or Christmas with the family that has become so stressful that part of you wishes it could just be avoided entirely. Bombs of health worries when the biopsy and diagnosis comes back, fueling your worst fears. Bombs of financial disaster. Job bombs when that promotion you’d been counting on goes to someone else, or when you find yourself unemployed at the worst possible moment, or when that business venture seems destined to fail. Relationship bombs abound; friendships crumble, marriages fail, children take unexpected paths.
Some of us have had bombs fall on our “Silent Night” in the past, some will in the future, and some are experiencing the pain and loss of that right now.
But here’s the Good News. And it’s really, really good news. The promise of the Word this Advent season, the promise of Christmas itself, is not of a “Silent Night”, as much as I love that carol (especially the Mannheim Steamroller rendition of it). But the Promise is Emmanuel, God with us. Yes, even when the bombs fall all around, God is with us.
