Silent Night

I've just had a couple of sleepless nights in a row, amounting to two hours of sleep since Thursday morning.  I'm reaping the consequences of that now, in terms of a fuzzy mind, an achey body, and a bizarre adrenaline rush.  So please forgive me if my ramblings here today are not easy to follow.

The mind is a crazy thing.  I sometimes wonder the purposes behind God's design of the mind, of thinking, or rationality and irrationality.  Of saneness and mental illness.  Of Peace and of Turmoil.

Christmas is nearly here, and as I lay in bed last night wide awake, trying to sort out the upcoming year in my mind, trying to examine if there is anything that I am not doing in terms of finding a job and a future for my family and I, I recognized the silence of the house.

It was not a peaceful silence.  It was a troubled silence, an uneasy silence, existing mostly in my own mind.  My fan was on, I could hear my youngest snoring, the heater kicking on and off.  And there was silence in my mind, but it was not peace.  There is a difference.

I think that Silent Night must be the most-loved, most-sung Christmas carol.  This morning I've wondered why, out of the dozens of carols there are, why is this the one that many people treasure in their souls?

My (very imperfect) conclusion?  It is because we all desire just that....a silent night, a holy night.  For all to be calm, all to be bright.  A different silence though, then the disorienting silence of my sleepless night.  A silence filled with peace.  With assurance that all is well.  A true ability to Be Still and Know that God is God.

The night Jesus was born is so often depicted as a serene, quite scene, full of peace and wonder.  But was it really?  Could it just as well been a terrifying night, full of uncertainty and anxiety as Mary labored to give birth to the Messiah?

I read recently somewhere, that the day my Jesus was born, is also the day my Jesus died.  Not only did He die later in life on the cross for me, he also died the day he was born, becoming a man so that he could become the sacrifice to pay for my sins, so that he could become the Prince of Peace.

Peace and silence are seem to be elusive, fleeting as of late.  Nonetheless, I pray that God will grant us all the gift of a Silent night, a Holy night, this coming Christmas.