One day last week, while driving to pick up my children at school, I saw up ahead a car stopped in the lane on the other side of the road. As I got closer, I could see the driver, a man about my father’s age, jump out his door and then slam it shut. Stomping over to the car behind him, which was also now stopped, he began pounding his fist on the driver’s side window, yelling things through the glass that should never be repeated. The driver of that car was also a man of about my father’s age. He was gesticulating wildly at the other man. I’m sure, if anyone could have asked them what was going on, the man in the first car would have said that the man in the second car was riding his bumper, while the man in the second car would have said that the man in the first car was driving slower than necessary.
My first thought in seeing this scene was, now these things wouldn’t happen if we all just walked more! But you and I both know that’s not true, because there are plenty of people walking in New York City today who also can’t get to where they’re going fast enough. My second thought was to pull my own car over to the side of the road and call for three tow trucks; not two, not just one for each of the raging men, but one also for me. Then, I would have told the two men to sit down on the curb and get comfy because we’re not going anywhere for nine months.
Nine months. That’s a full-term pregnancy. It’s the amount of time Mary is going to have to carry Jesus all the way to Bethlehem, the amount of time it takes to get a new life.
I am absolutely convinced that the problems of our world are not new. We have always been trying to get a piece of the pie for ourselves. Speeding ahead to get to the table first before anyone else. And when we can’t get there fast enough, we pound on the window of our neighbor and yell it’s their fault for going too slow in front of us. While our neighbor in front of us yells, it’s your fault for going too fast behind me. We are so quick to react and too quick to demand.
But can you imagine how differently things might have turned out for those two men and I had we sat down on the curb together for nine months? For one thing, we’d still be there. And we would have had to figure out by now how to keep each other warm at night, and how to stop a car three times a day to ask for food. I’m guessing that by now we also would have learned each other’s names, who our family is, and where we were all going on that day when our rage got the better of us.
The flyers in my mailbox lately, along with the ads on my TV, tell me there are lots of nice gifts we could buy or get this Christmas. But if it’s peace you want this year, can I recommend, dear reader, that you get the gift that will require nine months of assembly?
Spend nine months sitting across the table from someone who doesn’t share your views on religion, politics, life. Tell yourself that you will take the time to listen and learn. Let that be your gift.
Spend nine months repairing a broken relationship, because while we can bandage a wound in a second, healing takes time and intention.
Spend nine months trying to buy only fairtrade items that will also help support the underserved members of our communities and world. I promise you, at the end of those nine months, it won’t just be a refugee or a child victim of slave labor or a hungry neighbor whose life is changed for the better, it will be your life too.
Spend nine months attending a support group. Give yourself that much deserved chance at recovery. Or go be a sponsor for someone who needs a friend.
Spend nine months volunteering with a Boys or Girls Club in town, coaching Special Olympics, or teaching a child to read.
Spend nine months volunteering in the NICU at the hospital holding babies, especially the ones who arrived on this planet earlier than expected and who will need some extra TLC to help them get going. While you’re at it, hold out your arms to their parents too, and to all the mamas who grieve the babies only they got to know.
Spend nine months watering some dandelion you pulled out of the concrete while sitting on a curb licking your wounds and catching your breath. See how easy it is to bestow the gift of life.
PleaseGrace 