Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Yesterday was one of those productive but annoying days you have getting ready for the holidays. We have guests coming so we’re hauling tools out of a renovated room, wrapping presents, finding which lightbulb in seemingly every strand is burned out, and more. We’ve all had them!

The promise, to the kids, was that at the end of the day I’d take them to drive around and see Christmas lights around town. We’d get hot chocolate, listen to the indisputably greatest Christmas album of all time (Mario Lanza Sings Christmas Carols), and have a great time.

We got lots of decorations out — including my favorite Nativity set — one hand carved by a Christian family in China (pictured below). Like so many Nativity sets, it’s depiction of Christmas is idealized, bucolic, and frozen in a placid reverence.

Anyhow, we got most of the work done. Then it was time to head out for the promised Christmas light drive. Before the drive there was the argument about why the kids had dug a trench right by the gate. Then, in an effort to correct that, one of them ( just fresh from the shower and in his brand new pajamas) started sticking his hands into the dirt and throwing it back in the trench.

After that, we headed out. We managed to the hot chocolate. I must have bought the extra-sugared because my imagined lovely drive turned into the loudest, most raucous and least picture-perfect drive imaginable. It was….not pleasant! We got home and the unpleasantness persisted with children who have not learned how to be “so tender and mild” from the Christ Child quite yet!

Once, after much exasperation, they got to bed. I managed to break some lights and almost break some other decor whilst trying to get some more decorating done.

In frustrated exhaustion, I sat down and looked at the Nativity set. I remembered its promise. I must admit to being a little envious of the Blessed Mother given all that “Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes” stuff! But the Nativity is there, and I’m sure some crying happened at some point. I’m sure the ride back to Nazareth was hardly picture perfect.

We know that night was filled with its own struggles, doubts, and fears. But the promise of the holy night was not that all our days would be perfect but that the Lord would be with us through them all. That Chinese Nativity set reminds me that God’s promise is for all people, those around the world and around the corner, across all their struggles, fears, or hopes.

As we make our way through this season, we rely on that promise knowing that all our days, this blissful and those far less so, are walked with Emmanuel, God With Us.

Fr Robert