Christmas This Year | 01 | Pandemic Peace
My youngest daughter Rachel was a part of the worship service at Eastside Christian Church last weekend. The role of participating in worship services is not foreign to Rachel. On many occasions, she has played a piano keyboard, an electric or an acoustic guitar, and a violin to help provide instrumental music in our praise and worship band. More often than not, she is also adding vocals as a background singer or perhaps the featured soloist. There have been a few times when she has led the congregational singing. Rachel is at peace with being on stage during a worship service.
However this past weekend, Rachel’s contribution to the service was a video-taped testimony, a devotional leading the hearts and the minds of the worshiper. Rachel serves as the Music Education Director for Maxwell’s House of Music, a local music studio in Jeffersonville, Indiana. As a part of the outreach projects of the store, Rachel was asked to coordinate choir members composed of quarantined elder care patients in nursing homes across Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. About fifteen residents joined together in forming a virtual choir to present a three-song Christmas concert.
The Peace of a Choir
Rachel confessed on the video that when she started the project, she had no idea what she was doing. She had never directed a choir before. Truth be told, she had never been in a choir before. In high school and college, she was always in the band or orchestra. When her boss asked her to head the project, “I felt incredibly under-qualified.” Every week before rehearsal she would get extremely nervous and anxious, wanting things to go well. She so desired to do a good job, not only for her boss and studio, but for the lovely folks she had come to know.
A nurse at one of the residences contacted Rachel and said, “Thank you so much for putting on this choir. It has given my resident a reason to get out of bed in the morning.” Rachel said, “I realized at that point how little any of this had to do with me or the job that I am doing. It has given me the right perspective. I can see God moving in amazing ways through this. If you have a willing heart and are willing to sing, God can use you. We can come together even in the darkest of times.” Peace. Those who live in darkness will see a great light.
“It has never been about me.”
Those six words swim against the stream of our culture. Everything is about me. Rights. Choices. Path. All mine. Encouraged to have it our way, our way often steam rolls over the life of someone else. There are very few facets of society that put the needs of others ahead of the interests of self. Thinking of self first is the way of the world.
It always has been. Two thousand years ago in Jerusalem, it was about King Herod. When magi from the East wandered into the area of the palace searching for the one born king of the Jews, Herod was troubled. Indeed, trouble consumed the entire city. No one would have aspirations to be king, but him. Herod had killed family members before who seemed to be too ambitious.
Herod was compelled to know more about this threat to his throne. The paranoid ruler gathered chief priests and scribes, anyone in the Jewish faith who could tell him of this new-born king. Scripture doesn’t confirm, but Herod’s track record probably peppered punishment and death among those who couldn’t give him the information he desired.
Herod then tried to work the manipulating spin upon the magi. “Find out where the baby is and return to tell me, so that I may go worship him.” Warned in a dream to flee the other way, the magi steered clear of Herod’s ensnaring trap. Herod did the only illogical thing that a paranoid king could do. He had every male son under two years’ of age in the area put to death. Weeping and wailing blanketed the land. Mary and Joseph quietly slipped into Egyptian shadows.
“It has never been about the pandemic.”
Today life centers around a pandemic. We think and react based upon how COVID-19 may affect our life. If we are concerned about the availability of toilet paper, we horde it when we find it. If we don’t want to wear a mask, regardless of the other person, we simply don’t wear a mask. No one is going to tell me what to do! Keeping our distance is the responsibility of someone who cares, not of me.
But this Christmas isn’t going to be what it should be. We can’t meet in big groups. We aren’t able to have some of the activities that usually mark our celebration of the season. Attendance is down. Our offerings barely support the building and staff. What in the world are we going to do?
When people look back at the year 2020, many are going to remember what we didn’t have. It was the year when we didn’t have parties. There were no graduations. We had to postpone the vacation; we were not able to be married. Even our funeral services honoring the dead were called off. The year of the pandemic was the year of our loss. Resembling the days of the Civil War, the world wars, the depressions of the 1870’s, 1890’s and the 1930’s, our year has been our catastrophe.
Difficult to Imagine Such Peace
Difficult to imagine that this isn’t about me – I am the one that is affected.
It is always about something bigger than me.
God can use even a pandemic to bring peace to your turmoil, joy to your journey, and silence to your noisy night.
It has never been about the pandemic, but what amazing things God can do, in spite of the pandemic, with a heart that is willing.
For unto you, on a day just like this, some two thousand years ago, is born in the city of David a savior who is Christ the Lord. And His name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Prince of Peace,
Conqueror of COVID.
