Half-spent

Lo, how a rose e'er blooming from tender stem hath sprung.
Of Jesse's lineage coming as saints of old have sung. 
It came a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.
This flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air, 
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God, from sin and death he saves us,
And lightens every load.

Are you like me? Do you have those nights where you wake, peer futilely into the darkness, and know that you won't be going back to sleep? 'Half-spent night' seems like the perfect description of that 3 a.m. kind of waking; Ray Bradbury said in his novel 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' that nothing good ever came of a wakefulness at such an hour. When I picture the world at the time of Jesus' birth, I think of a half-spent night kind of existence. For the Jews, a prophetic voice had been absent for 400 years or so, and the Romans were firmly in control of their lives. It was time for...something; they may not have known what, but for something.

Then, into the emptiness and dark of a 3 a.m. waking, a rose; more than that, a winter rose, one out of season, and the more precious for it. I am not sure what 'glorious splendor' would look like, but it seems you would have to feel such a splendor. And, along with the darkness are chased away the fears and doubts that wait till 3 a.m. to surface. The fragrance of splendor takes up the space once filled with the acrid odor of unknowing and doubt. And that Rose, with an unimaginable tender power, lightens our load, and continues to lighten our load.

The Weary Road

All ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,
look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing;
O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.
--- Edmund Sears

This unfamiliar verse of the very familiar carol "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" has always drawn my soul. We all read our lives into the songs we sing, I think, and I read mine into this verse. I have felt that this verse speaks to anyone dealing with a chronic condition, toiling sometimes with 'painful steps and slow'. This Advent, I feel it speaks to many, many of us, burdened with cares and sorrows beyond our comprehension. Who of us does not now feel crushed, stooped, weary of the pain of being human in a world full of humans?

But look! Ahead of us shine hours of ease and gladness, golden in their comfort. Some who know me may be saying, right about now, that it is not like me to talk about "pie in the sky, bye and bye", and you would be right. Stay with me. The genius in this verse, and in the grace offered us, is that the angels don't come like shiny aliens and whisk us away to a world where nothing matters anymore. No, the angels' song fills the skies over the weary road. Picture yourself, and me, all of us, laid out on the hoods of our cars, wrapped in fleece blankets against the December chill; and there, because we happen to be travelers on this weary road, we hear angels. Because life has led us here, where we are, how we are, dealing with what we must, we hear the angels sing.

Wouldn't miss it for the world.