By: Pastor Lars Janssen
He was crying. That’s what caught my attention. I was about to make a quick stop at the grocery store with a van full of kids when I saw him limping like a wounded bear down the sidewalk. It looked serious — he looked hurt.
I voiced my concern as I pulled into the parking lot and found a spot near where he was headed. I got out to ask the young man if he was alright and he said he wasn’t. His crying slowed as we talked but he wasn’t very coherent. He showed me an awful gaping wound on his knee and claimed he was “going septic” head-to-toe. We were standing two blocks from the hospital—it was visible over the houses behind him as he spoke.
“Brother,” I said, “you need to go to the hospital.”
“No-o-o,” he whined as if I’d told him to go to his room, “Brother, they won’t help me there. They want me to sit and wait … they don’t understand … they won’t help me.”
“You need to get that taken care of,” I urged, “and they can help you.”
“Brother,” he retorted, “I’m not walking over there … I know they won’t help me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
He turned away from me and continued hobbling down the sidewalk away from the hospital. I got back in the van and my kids started asking questions.
“His knee is hurt pretty badly,” I explained, “I told him that he should go to the hospital but he won’t. He doesn’t think they’ll help him.”
One of my kids asked, “Is he going to be OK?”
“I don’t know,” was the only honest response I could give.
Then I went into the grocery store. I wondered how far he could walk on that knee. I was shocked by the discordant notes of the past few minutes — from jokes with my kids to this unsettling interaction and then to buying a rotisserie chicken for dinner. It felt choppy like the crying man’s limp. I found it difficult to process.
That’s a bit like how the story feels in Luke 2:1-7.
Limp: the pagan rulers dictate a census to their conquered subjects.
Limp: betrothed Joseph and pregnant Mary have to make an unplanned days-long walk to Bethlehem.
Limp: Jesus is born homeless with a feeding trough for a cradle.
It’s choppy, unsettling, and difficult to process.
How much of our lives reflect this dissonance? Whether it’s shoppers griping while cheery music plays, bright lights mocking our low spirits, or good news falling on deaf ears, we all tend to limp and cry through the discordant brokenness in our world. At Christmas, we are reminded that Jesus entered our difficult-to-process world to heal our limps and dry our tears.
I walked back to the van struggling to make sense of the last few minutes and I wondered how God might make music from such sad and halting noise. As I settled into the seat, I looked at my kids in the mirror.
“That was a hard situation,” I said, “And now it feels like we’re supposed to go on with life as if it didn’t happen. That’s really strange. Let’s talk to God about it.”
So we prayed for the crying man with the limp. We don’t know what God will do with him, but we do know what God did with the halting story of Jesus’s birth. God sent an angel to reveal the rhythm behind the discord (Luke 2:10-12):
“And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’”
It makes me smile to see that even the feeding trough was an essential note in God’s song. And God sent angels to sing the chaos into music for us (Luke 2:14):
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When it’s hard to hear the sense of his music, that’s when we need to listen to Jesus most carefully. He wept and was wounded so that one day we’ll never cry or limp again.
Here’s your Christmas challenge, Central: listen carefully to Jesus, even when the music of this life sounds like noise. Our Jesus turns cacophony into a symphony.
