Tea Towels, Snow Patrol and Together for Christmas

What is it about Christmas?

I don’t mean the hype and the tripe – I mean what is about Christmas that sustains the magic it casts over us?

Take last night for example. I attended my daughters Christmas play for the Rainbows, Brownies and Girl Guides. Some of the little ones were dressed wearing the humble tea towel round their heads. How many times have we all seen that over the years? It never changes. If you need a Christmas prop, then the tea towel will always oblige. Tied as usual with a piece of string it sits there perfectly posed as the youngsters go about acting and playing their part.

And then I thought.

How appropriate that something as ordinary and humble as a tea towel should become an abiding memory of the Christmas story. As if its purpose speaks beyond what it is. How wrong it would be to replace the towel with a crown or hat. Its simplicity reminds us and retells the story of how God invades time and space in humility and vulnerability. When all is stripped away, the power of the Christmas story is left to tell its tale. And more.

When everything is stripped away and we’re left looking into a feeding trough into which the Christ Child is laid, its powerful story pulls us together. Here we see reconciliation, togetherness, and hope. As we gaze across an empty space and see a baby crying in a manger we see the extraordinary lengths to which God is prepared to travel in order to mend a broken world. What is it about a baby that brings warring factions together?

Outside of course the madness continues. Tranquillity gives way to tinsel and tack, but then, out of the blue I was redeemed in a most unusual way, when the Snow Patrol and their song Chasing Cars came to my rescue.

They sang…

I need your grace, To remind me, To find my own.

And then it clicked, and into all this madness I heard God speak, he said:

If I lay here, If I just lay here,  Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Then suddenly, the reality of Christmas came home again.

Finally, we were together.

Christmas Joy

 

The other day I started to think about the words of an old hymn. They are very powerful and were written by John Newton an old slave trader turned Christian from the 18th Century. The life of Newton has been common news over the past year with the commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade. Of all people, his life is a celebration of the light of God breaking into the darkness of a human soul. His latter years were spent in quiet contemplation of the lives lost to slavery and his part in that evil. His comfort came from a pen that allowed him to write the words of many a famous hymn, the most popular being Amazing Grace.

I soon discovered that the words of the song coming to my mind were also part of Newton’s treasury. Why they would come to me at Christmas when I’d easier be stirred by a good old carol I’m not sure but their depth and power is without question and serve to remind us that the babe of Bethlehem grows into the Christ of the crucifixion. Newton’s prose carve through the triviality of the season like a knife through roast turkey and when embraced in their fullness remind us again that the power of God’s grace is the same regardless of the century into which it is delivered.

That same grace which brought joy into the heart of a hardened slave trader is the same grace that can win over our hearts today and leave us with a Christmas joy that can’t be bought online, or found amongst the bargains of the High Street. We miss something if we don’t look beyond the superficial but gain everything when we allow the supernatural action of the virgin child to shape our reason for the season.

These are the words he wrote:

How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear! It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear.

He went on….

Dear Name, the rock on which I build, my shield and hiding-place, my never-failing treasury, filled with boundless stores of grace!

And we could write more… but sufficient are the words to warm the heart this Christmas and  may you hum them merrily as you sip your glass of mulled wine on this crisp, dark winter’s Eve.