Christmas Eve and a Volvo Station Wagon

Austin Day 108:

This morning I am sitting at one of my favorite Austin coffee shops and sorting through thousands of Car Ads online.

I finally got an offer from my insurance company to "settle" my claim.It was not good. It is not good enough to put me back into the same car I had had. It was not enough to get me back into the car I loved. I don't feel "settled". I feel shook up inside. I feel sad. I feel like I may start crying in public.

The thing is, it wasn't just a car thing.
It's not just about stuff.. I think it's about peace.
I think I'm so upset because for a while I was just cruising through my life here in Austin, quite literally.

But now, well. I'm not.

Don't we all want to be at peace? Isn't that what we war for? to at some point be at some kind of peace with life?

I've been thinking about Peter a lot lately (and the early church in Acts). Mostly because the first "sermon" I "preached" (yes those quotes are on purpose!) dealt with the fact that Jesus the Messiah was the fulfillment of JEWISH promise. He was for THEM, and now Peter had to deal with the thought that that promise might be for EVERYBODY.

How unsettling. You wait your whole life, and your parents and your grandparents and every ancestor before them has been WAITING for this one thing to happen, for salvation. All of them wait their whole lives in expectation and the thing they wait for never comes. But long before they die they pass that hope of salvation onto their children, and then their children WAIT.

Wait for what? for the hope of salvation, for PEACE. A peace that allows them to face whatever the world would bring. That's fierce hope.

I can understand the feelings of resentment that the "righteous" Jews who were living in this new peace brought about through Christ must have felt,not wanting to share it with people weren't actively longing, hoping, praying for this kind of peace must have hurt. I can sympathize because I know that I am not capable of that kind of waiting. I want that peace now!!

And oddly enough, tonight we celebrate the night where hope and rejoicing meet. The rejoicing in the fulfillment an ancient promise and the bringing forth of peace. That fierce hope had "paid off".

And while I am sulking in a little coffee shop in central Texas that fulfilled promise reminds me of something I am guilty of forgetting on a regular basis. I am reminded that real peace, the real rejoicing in the gift of Jesus, isn't the same as Volvo Station Wagon peace.
Because a Volvo ,sound as it maybe, can hit a puddle and slide right into the back of a Chevy. It can crumple and let you down.
But Jesus, the Prince of peace, heals deep wounds, carries heavy burdens, brings light and life into deep dark corners of our hearts and of this world and restores us to a real relationship with a living God.

So tonight, inasmuch as we may have details of the Christmas story tangled in our minds with carols and Christmas cards, I will think about two people making their way through a big city looking for a place to rest. I will think about a tired Mary and Joesph, overwhelmed by the coming about of a hefty promise. And I will think about God grinning at the world, unassumingly receiving it's Savior, Their Prince of Peace.

And as I think about these things I will rejoice because even I, a girl who is incapable of waiting for anything, can partake in this gift I was not wise enough to hope for.



Merry Christmas.