Advent 2019 – Day 22

From Fleming Rutledge’s Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus:

“One of the most excruciating passages of literature that I have ever read is about a Christmas dinner. It is in William Styron’s novel—his best by a long way, in my opinion—called Lie Down in Darkness. The family whose desperate and doomed lives make up the plot of the novel gather around the table. It is gorgeously laid with the family silver, linens, and crystal (this takes place in Tidewater Virginia). The dining room is gleaming with candlelight and festooned with evergreens. The mother has outdone herself with the food. Everyone is trying to be nice, trying not to say the wrong thing, trying to be happy. But bit by bit, the pain and torment in the family relationships are exposed and the dinner ends in catastrophe. The power of the scene lies in the contrast between the polished perfection of the holiday table and the unendurable anguish in the hearts of the participants. I don’t for a minute mean to suggest that everybody’s Christmas dinners are like that. But I think you know what I mean. Things don’t work out the way we want them to. At the heart of human life there is an incapacity to make things turn out right…

“All the psychotherapy and Prozac that we can throw at the problem has not been able to make the Christmas dinner turn out right. If the Christmas dinner turns out right, it is not our doing; it is the grace of God…

“God has acted. God has intervened. God is the one who rules over the everlasting kingdom that he delivers to his Son. In the announcement of Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, we hear a voice from beyond ourselves, a voice quite literally from out of this world. Only God is able to give true and lasting peace. Only God can create a new kingdom where no evil and no disappointment can ever enter. The news from Saint Luke is that God himself has entered this world. His own blood will be shed in order to guarantee that the fountains of blood will one day come to an end forever. Jesus Christ, the Lord, is our hope. Jesus Christ is our future. Jesus, our Savior, and our God. The little strings of lights in the dark places remain lit, by his grace, in the dark places until he comes again. Amen.”