I let my eyes rest a while on each person gathered in the room, pondering the roads that had brought them to that warm and inviting home that night.
We were laughing, some more raucously than others, as you might expect at a Christmas party. This one was with my wife’s small group bible study. We Baptists call them Sunday School classes.
After the food, the desert, and the “dirty Santa,” exchange of gifts, I sat back, recalling to myself how many of these gatherings I had attended, for I have pastored this flock for over 17 years now. And I sort of mentally distanced myself for a moment or two, minimizing myself, as though I were a fly-on-the-wall.
Next to me sat my wife, who has been plunged beneath life’s harsh surface time after time over the past few years, each time seemingly overwhelmed first by one loss and then another, only to re-surface after each despairing event, somehow glistening a little brighter under the sunshine of God’s grace.
And then there was a couple without whom I would never have been there, not just at the party, but in this particular place of ministry, so instrumental were these two in my choosing to come, and once here, in my deciding to stay on for these many years. Now, having been so deeply engaged in church activity, they are at ease in the twilight years of their church involvement, relishing each moment with God’s family as if each gathering is a tiny droplet of grace silently fallen from heaven.
Another couple always seems to show up with just the right measure of grace, regardless of the kind of day they’ve had. They are never so above the clouds that you can’t find them, neither so low that you have to pick them up. Although I know they have fearful moments, they nonetheless fill the room with a steady stream of joy, regardless of their gains or losses for the day.
Then, I observed another, who had absorbed more than their share of pain after their family’s patriarch had passed; another carries the weight of a harsh family upbringing; another awakens each day with the heaviness of grief; more than one lives with constant physical pain that threatens the quality and length of life; others carry personal burdens for themselves, family, and friends.
We were all just a bunch of refugees, gathered there that night, having found solace on an island of grace while we waited for help to come. And we were and remain confident that the Help we anticipate will come, which is, after all, what makes Christmas truly Christmas.
Trudging together with these friends through the years, and watching closely, I see God’s grace in the passing of time, almost as if time itself and the struggles that accompany it, bring grace to the surface, even though it’s not at all evident to the physical eye. To a stranger or mere acquaintance, such grace would have gone unnoticed amidst the Christmas cheer, glad tidings, and joyous voices there that night.
But that night, like a fly-on-a-wall, I could sense it: the unobtrusive work of God’s creation, where, just like He did in a far-away manger so long ago, He was once again breaking into our world, coming to us, beneath the surface, quietly, with grace unnoticed.