On the Way to Christmas
An odd thing happened on the way to Christmas. It was on an evening as serene as a Yule greeting card. I had picked up my youngest daughter at Hopkins airport in Cleveland. We made a brief stop in Aurora. Now on our way home, we got into a rather gutsy discussion of what is real Christianity, sharing our thoughts in the contemplative ambience of our car. It was a wonderful moment, as we were able to say what we meant.
Out of the night, like a meteor, a fair-sized doe flashed before our eyes. My first, instantaneous thought was, “Wow. What a beautiful deer!” My second was: “Brakes!!” We struck the deer and crashed into the guard rail. After a struggle to get up, the deer miraculously catapulted over the guard rail and disappeared into the snowy woods. We were able to disengage ourselves from the guard rail and drive on to a lighted place where we could turn in and inspect the damage. Not bad! A dented fender, a smashed headlight, and a missing license tag. Almost immediately, a police car pulled in behind us. Following from a distance, he had seen us collide with the guard rail and assumed that he was chasing another drunk. But he accepted our story and added that we were the fourth incident that night. It is always comforting to know that your are in the numbers! This hefty arm of the law was grace personified. He phoned in a police report for insurance purposes. Later, he left, hunted for and found our license plate, tracked the deer for a quarter of a mile, and concluded that the animal was very much alive. That news was reassuring!
Naturally, being a very amateur theologian, I had to reflect on the meaning of all of this. My daughter twitted me: “It’s the devil.” But I could only think of the abrupt invasion of the real world into our ponderings and the force of its impact. The question of the real was now no mere observation; it was a left hook to the jaw. Just when we think we have everything in hand, we are bounced by a reality we cannot control. The real world is not merely the fact, however forceful; it is also the provocation of what is called “the Wholly Other,” God Himself. He skips on the mountain “like a ram” says the Psalmist. God breaks into the world as “flesh and blood,” as Jesus, “full of grace . . . .” Grace, even as a man in blue behind a badge. “As a hind longs for the running streams, so do I long for thee, O God!”