In Search of Silent Night

It is still dark on this December morning 2024. I am in my Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer pajamas gazing at our Christmas tree lit with colored lights and ornaments almost forty years old. The only sounds are wind gusts blowing against the windows and the tick tick tick of the old grandfather clock. I put the chimes on silent because, after all, I am in search of silence 🤓 The moment is postcard perfect but, I am not…

My mind clamors like pots and pans beating at Midnight on New Years Eve. Wake up! Do this! Remember that! I anticipate the coming New Year with hope and joy but, it is too early for such noise. I am, after all, in search of silence.

So I sing hoping to silence the noisy un-silent silence.

Silent Night. Holy Night. All is calm. All is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child. Holy Infant……. Stop!

Sorry for the exclamation mark if you were entering into silence, but that’s what happened to me. I literally said, Stop! There is nothing quiet about giving birth. It surely wasn’t for me. I yelled, screamed, and groaned. I also cried with joyful relief when my babies were born. Family and hospital staff clapped, cheered, and laughed. The newest family members, still wrinkly and red from having been in the womb, well… each of them cried. A lot. That’s a good thing though.

My point is this. I seriously doubt the moment was silent in Bethlehem’s stable. Even if Mary did not scream (I think she did) Joseph was probably yelling, Come on, Mary. Look! A baby boy! Let’s call him, Jesus! Angels were singing. Cows were mooing. Lambs were baa baa ing…… Even the swishing of hay in the feeding trough spoke as it pointed to the Lamb of God swaddled in cloths. Emmanuel had finally arrived.

Some people eagerly expected His arrival because of Isaiah’s prophecies. Even so, few could have imagined the promise would arrive in such a lowly human form… in weakness… in cries… in love.

God’s greatest Gift entered the chaos of our weakness… our cries… our need for love from a Savior and from fellow humankind.

I sigh and pause upon that note… Therein is the holy silence that calms my heart and soul.

Perhaps it was indeed a most beautiful Silent Night after all.