Christmas Unprepared

I could not recall a Christmas for which I was less spiritually prepared than this year. I had some good intentions, go to church, follow an Advent devotional, listen often to “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” and listen to the “O Antiphons.” 

 

I did none of those. Instead, life grabbed me in ways unanticipated, and unwanted. I will not share the details here, but there were disruptive and emotionally difficult developments, both personal and public.

 

This morning at Manna House, in my prayer time before opening, I sat with my lack of preparation for Christmas. I made some attempts at rationalization. But I ultimately accepted that I failed. I did not prepare for and was not ready to celebrate the birth of Christ.

 

With that weighing down my heart, I left off my prayer time and started preparing Manna House for this morning’s hospitality. I engaged in the routine preparation: fill the sugar and creamer dispensers, and put them out on the table in the backyard, along with the water cooler; take out all the items to be given out for “socks and hygiene” and place them in the counter on the back porch; take out the 100 cup coffee pot, coffee cups, stir sticks, and vitamins and place them at the coffee serving station; wipe off the picnic tables; and finally start the space heater in the warming center for our guests. I did what I do each morning to prepare Manna House for hospitality.

As I neared the end of this work of preparation to welcome our guests, an old familiar scripture came to mind, Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus begins to teach saying, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.” Then he describes a judgment based upon whether we fed the hungry, gave the thirsty something to drink, gave clothes to those who needed them, took care of the sick, and visited those in prison. Jesus underlines that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I had prepared for the presence of Christ after all.

Christmas “is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making the crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of everyday, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil” (Thurman, The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations, p. xiv).