Will Jesus Come This Christmas?

I walked down a hospital hallway asking myself that question.  I knew the date was December 25.  I was the chaplain on call at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.  I had actually volunteered to work Christmas Day.  Our supervisor had called his four residents to his office for the annual ritual of the Christmas work schedule lottery.  By random selection, one of us would spend Christmas Day at the hospital while the other three celebrated with family.  Just before the big drawing, I spoke up.  I was the only single person in the chaplain’s department and I wanted my coworkers to be with their spouses and children.  That was the noble side of my volunteering.  The not-so-noble side was that I didn’t want to face Christmas that year.  My dad had died just two months earlier, the sudden casualty of an aggressive inoperable brain tumor.  I thought keeping busy and focusing my energies on the needs of patients would be the least painful way I could pass the time.  So, there I was, walking down the hallway, speaking to every other employee I passed, and doubting that anything holy would happen that day.  

 
Christmas is a long, tough day for most everyone spending it in a hospital.  All but the sickest patients are discharged so they can benefit from the blessings of home.  Entire floors of the hospital are empty with those too sick to go home gathered into a few active units staffed by other lottery losers.  Between the grief inside me and the “left behind” feeling of those around me, my expectations for the day were pretty low.
What I failed to remember that day was Christmas has never happened in perfect places.  The holy family, a young woman tortured by the gossipy whispers of her fellow villagers, a young man leading his very expectant wife on a twenty mile journey to meet the taxation requirements of a cruel occupying army, a little town so overflowing with guests that no accommodations could be found for these weary travelers, the last choice refuge of a place meant for animals, the terror of giving birth without the help of a midwife, the support of family, or the simplest comforts of home.  Jesus certainly wasn’t born in a perfect time or place.  And, as I would learn that Christmas Day, he still comes into this world in less than perfect times and places. 

As I came to the end of that long day of ministry, I propped up my feet, leaned back in my chair, and realized I had an answer to my question.  Jesus, had, in fact, come that Christmas.   

He came—to the parents and grandparents of a beautiful but tragically stillborn child, a family that clung to the hope that because of Jesus, they would, one day, hold that child in heaven. 

He came—to a woman who wanted to go home, but knew that her circumstances were taking her, instead, to a nursing home; a woman who, amid all the unwanted changes in her life, rested in the truth that would not change, the Savior who is forever faithful, the love from which nothing could ever separate her.

He came—to a man who invited me to share the Christmas celebration his family had brought to him at the hospital because he couldn’t go home, and we knew he never would. It was a happy day; it was a good day because he knew that every day is a gift from God, every day a gift to share with those you love. 

He came—in the hospital cafeteria as my family gave up their Christmas feast to drive an hour to spend a little time with me feasting on hospital cuisine.  Though we all missed my dad at that meal, we also knew how blessed we were to be together.   

This Christmas may find you in a far from perfect place, a place that feels far away from the peace and joy of the season.  May you learn what I learned that Christmas long ago.  Jesus doesn’t wait for a perfect place to be born. The One born in a stable is ready to be born into your messy world and mine.