A personal note at Christmas

Dear friends:

Another year is coming to a close, and it’s closing upon a world racked with violence, fear, and evil.  But, as always, it closes with the boundless promise and the remarkable grounds for optimism represented by Christmas.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s words come to mind, written in the darkest days of the American Civil War.  Not long before, as the result of a tragic fire that had grievously injured him too, he’d become a widower for the second time.  And just days earlier, he’d heard that his son had been seriously wounded at the Battle of New Hope Church in Virginia.  The original words of “Christmas Bells” read slightly differently from the lyrics with which many of us are familiar:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

I join in that confidence.  In the end, through the coming of Christ, “all is well.”

I want to wish all of you a wonderful Christmas and a healthy, happy, and successful 2016.

Posted from Richmond, Virginia