I remember hearing Garrison Keillor one lazy Saturday afternoon tell a story as only he can of a time when he was a boy on the family farm. He and a couple of friends had wandered over to where the hog pen and were throwing small stones at the fat old hogs trying to get them to move. It was just something to do if you’re a bored 10 year old boy looking for something to amuse you.
Well his father scolded him real good. He said, “Don’t you ever do that. Those hogs aren’t here for sport.”
About a week later, his father and the hired men slaughtered those hogs and put the meat up for the winter. Garrison couldn’t quite understand it. What’s worse? Throwing pebbles at a hog or slaughtering it? Killing time or killing the hog? It didn’t make any sense.
But later as a grown man, thinking back, he remembered the look on the faces of those men as they slaughtered those hogs. They were serious and silent. It was a very sober business. It was meat that would feed the whole family for the upcoming long, harsh Minnesota winter. There was a lot at stake.
As I reflected upon that story, it struck me that expressing joy at the birth of Jesus at Christmas is serious business. All the commercialization … all the sappy sentimentality … all the artificial substitutes for the heart of Christmas joy is like throwing pebbles at hogs. It’s sport. It’s something to do when you don’t really know the purpose or value of something.
But the birth of Jesus is full of purpose and lasting importance. This is eternal light and everlasting life coming into a world of darkness and death. It’s not meant for sport or to be trivialized. And expressing our joy over it sends a serious message to a world that behaves like bored 10 year old boys looking for something to distract or amuse them. Our joy says this Gift of God is meant to get us through a life that has a lot of long and harsh winters in it.
Joy to the world is serious business. This Christmas, let’s be about our business.
...just thinkling
