Immediate Word

The process of metamorphosis changes the whole being into something entirely new. Every school child knows that this very process changes a grub in a chrysalis into a magnificent butterfly. The Greek word for "repent" is based on the same root word as metamorphosis. That's the kind of change that John is looking for. That's the kind of change we need to make to really know the joy and power of our faith.

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Waiting. It takes time to wait. Like a woman expecting a child, the anticipation of a birth brings with it a period of anxious and eager joy. The joy builds and also knows how vulnerable life is. Things can go dreadfully wrong, but when they go right, and they often do, the joy we know of the birth of a child always far exceeds the pain of childbirth and dispels the doubts we had while we waited. So it is with our expectations of the coming of the kingdom of God. Much can go wrong, but God's reign is breaking in upon us! And when it does, what God finally gives us is like a day of radiant gladness! In the meantime, we wait.

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Peace in the Middle East? That's like thinking that the ancient hatreds between Irish Protestants and Catholics were reconcilable. But the Good Friday agreements were a miracle that has held so far. Peace in the Middle East? What would the Prophet say?

"Shall I not inform you of a better act than fasting, alms, and prayers? Making peace between one another: enmity and malice tear up heavenly rewards by the roots" -- Muhammad

Isn't it amazing how easily people of faith forget what the Lawgiver, the Prophet and the Savior require?

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As we prepare for the coming of the Christ Child, instead of rushing around frantically, let us instead look around us to see who might need our help. Author Walter Wangerin, Jr. writes:

I fear that the self-satisfying lives of today, our abilities to fulfill even silly and slight desires, are the more benighted ones. They blind us to holier relationships, patience, obedience, faith, and plain kindness.

This Christmas, let what is ageless and durable hold your attentions, not what is present and passing. Look rather to your soul than to your easeful body - and to God rather than to some foolish form of "happiness."

Plow your neighbor's driveway. Bring her food. Sing to him in the nursing home. Kneel down and kiss your children. Love God.

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Martin Luther said something similar in one of his sermons on the birth of Jesus:

There are many of you in this congregation who think to yourselves: "If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the Baby! I would have washed his diapers.

"How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!"

Yes, you would! You say that because you know how great Christ is, but if you had been there at that time you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem. Childish and silly thoughts are these! Why don't you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.

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As Christmas approaches, we may feel ourselves held back in some way: by health problems, by financial problems, by family problems or by other difficulties. It might be good to remember what German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was later martyred by the Nazis, wrote to his parents from his prison cell on December 17, 1943:

For a Christian there is nothing particularly difficult about Christmas in a prison cell. I daresay it will have more meaning and will be observed with greater sincerity here in this prison than in places where all that survives of the feast is its name....

For the prisoner the Christmas story is glad tidings in a very real sense. And that faith gives the prisoner a part in the communion of saints, a fellowship transcending the bounds of time and space.

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"Of St. Paul's trio -- faith, hope, and love -- the greatest, he affirms, is love True; but the most neglected is hope. Yet, in the Bible it is a major theme.

"To a Hebrew, the word conveyed much more than it does to an American today. We have eviscerated hope! A Hebrew thought of it in terms of waiting on, looking to (Psalm 62:1, 5; 130:1-6; Isaiah 40:29-31). Hope is a close cousin of faith. It is confident expectancy in a faithful and loving God."
-- Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1974-80

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"... this is the good new: the hope of the world does not lie in the hopefulness of us Christians and what we can accomplish by our hopeful battle for a new world and a new humanity. The hope of the world lies in the liberating power of God and God's promise through Jesus Christ to overcome the creaturely, sinful, political and economic poverty and oppression that sour and destroy human life in the world... Just when we remember and confess this, we will discover that the faith and hope we cannot give ourselves becomes a reality."
-- Shirley C. Guthrie, "Diversity in Faith -- Unity in Christ"

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"As I was eating breakfast one morning I overheard two oncologists discussing the papers they were to present that day at the national meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. One was complaining bitterly:

'You know, Bob, I just don't understand it. We used the same drugs, the same dosage, the same schedule, and the same entry criteria. Yet I got a 22 percent response rate and you got a 74 percent. That's unheard of for metastatic lung cancer. How do you do it?'

'We're both using Etoposide, Platinol, Oncovin, and hydroxyurea. You call yours EPOH. I tell my patients I am giving them HOPE. Sure, I tell them this is experimental, and we go over the long list of side effects together. But I emphasize that we have a chance. As dismal as the statistics are for non-small cell, there are always a few percent who do really well.' "
-- William Buchholz, M. D., quoted by Norman Cousins in "Head First, the Biology of Hope"