Postcards

My friend’s son is dying. He’s eight, and the cancer is proving to be just too much. He is still fighting, and at least for the moment he is doing OK. But at this point, everyone agrees, it’s just a matter of time. I recently came across an old picture of my friend and me, long before she had a child or was even married. She was just a happy priest. And looking into her eyes I had to ask myself – how could she have known? How could she have known the joy that would come with her son, and the agony of dealing with his death? How could any of us have known?

It’s not entirely uncommon at nursing stations in hospitals to see obituaries hanging on the walls. These are of patients who have recently passed. It’s especially hard with younger patients – the pictures are senior portraits or of prom or something. And I find myself again looking into their eyes and asking how could you have known? How could you have known, when that happy picture was taken, the tragedy that would befall you?

These images form postcards in my mind. Postcards of happy people destined for sadness.

And of course, at this time of year there is a postcard that, if it didn’t actually arrive in your mailbox, I know you have at least seen it. It’s a picture of a babe in a manger, with a star overhead, on a mysterious night long ago. And I ask myself again: how could you have known? How could any of you have known how that life would end in unbearable tragedy, and then, three days later, provide hope through salvation for all humankind?

I used to ask myself this question: what could have been going on in the course of human history that prompted God to send Jesus into the world at the precise moment he choose? What was so bad that the world needed God on Earth in that moment? But now I ask myself this: Why is it that we are blessed to live our lives knowing of the miracle of Christmas? Maybe it had nothing to do with what was going on; maybe it had to do with what could go on in that knowledge of that hope.

It is that hope that makes looking at those postcards bearable. My Christmas prayer is that the love that entered this world in human form long ago continues to enter our lives each and every day. So that when we look at postcards we see not tragedy but glorious hope.

Merry Christmas!