White as Snow 12.5.2024

    When I started learning how to play White Christmas three weeks ago, my goal was not to be able to play and sing it while it was actually snowing. Things here alongside the mighty Wabash have changed a bit. Some might say things have gotten out of hand. That particular hand might be extended with a snowball. Snow arrived here before December.  We had several inches on Saturday, and today (Monday) it seems to keep on falling. 

    For many people snow is an acquired taste. For others—Mrs. Beckman for example snow is ironclad proof of the love of God. She loves the stuff. I can make do. The issue for me, and others, is that we have to get out and go while it is coming down, and when it stops, if there is enough (too much) of it, it must be moved. This is the story of winter here in the Midwest.  Right now, it is disarming if not aggravating. In a month we will wear shorts to take the trash to the curb. 

    During the Advent and Christmas season snow is less a weather phenomenon and more of a romantic enhancement. When the snow is falling, and you are putting up decorations one relishes the ambiance. Interestingly, I was driving around town Sunday morning about 6.00 a.m., relishing no ambiance. I was simply trying to determine whether or not, on December 1, the roads were safe to travel. Not exactly a romantic morning, but part of the process of a snowy December morning, hoping against hope for a White Christmas.  

    Most Decembers we wait much longer. The month rolls in with hope and anticipation, we hit a couple of days nearing sixty degrees, we see someone at the Casey’s wearing shorts and we think “No White Christmas this year!” Some are sad. Others (silently) rejoice that the events of a busy month will not be impacted by snowy roads and slippery parking lots. Some sit by their windows and long for some idyllic past when our days were all merry and bright, and all Christmas’s were white. 

    Longing is an interesting emotion during Advent. Longing during this season reminds us that in the far-off past people had more on their minds than snow. The time between the closing of the Old Testament canon and the first appearance of Jesus was a time of longing. Rather than our yearly renewal of Advent hope, God’s people looked for the appearance of a long-anticipated deliverer, an anointed one who would announce jubilee and Kingdom to a desperate world. Much of their anticipation was wasted on forlorn forecasts of military might and earthly dominion. Little did they know that Immanuel would come not robed as overlord but swaddled and diapered. 

    They learned the hard way that what we hope for determines what we are able to see. Because they entangled their hopes and dreams with promises of earthly power, they could only be disappointed. Their disillusion was not because our Jesus lacked anything, but because their vision of the future was shaped by longing for the wrong thing. They looked for certainty in a world defined by uncertainty. They wished for knowledge when much of life requires trust. They wanted to see, when faith itself is Kingdom’s substitute for sight. 

    And every year we have the opportunity to reconsider our ways and reconfigure our thinking to more fully align with what we find in Scripture. That is what advent is for. Yes, the texts are familiar, and the hopes might seem melodramatic. However, if we allow ourselves the time and distance necessary every advent is an opportunity to reignite our faith in that promised Savior who came not to meet our expectations—but God’s. 

    We will sing familiar songs and inhabit well-worn traditions. I’ve been wearing Christmas ties and soon will deploy a sweatshirt or two. We look at the calendar and try to figure how and when to get there and then with those that we love. Lists are made, and some checked twice all presuming that this season is about more than the tinsel, the decorations, the gifts, and yes—about more than the snow.