It was Christmas
Eve. Rain that had pelted the worshipers coming to the Christmas Eve service
had stopped and the wind now blew with
a vengeance out of the northwest. The forecaster had warned that there would be
a “flash freeze” as temperatures dropped and finally bottomed out at ten
degrees below zero. Already the remaining moisture in the air had changed to a
mixture of sleet and snow flakes. I locked up the church and walked across the
church parking lot to the parsonage. There I intended to throw some more logs
in the wood stove, have some Christmas Eve dessert, and tuck into bed our two
excited children. They eagerly anticipated Christmas morning and the surprises
they assumed would be waiting for them.
After the prayers and wrestling matches in
their beds, it was time to go down stairs to sit in the overstuffed chair and
watch the dancing flames behind the glass panels of the woodstove. Outside the
wind howled and the branches of giant oak trees rattled with each blast. I sat
down exhausted and discouraged. The yearlong church building project had
drained me of energy. Disputes some church attendees had with one another
discouraged me. Financial issues at the church and my own personal accounts
concerned me. The cares and heavy burdens of individuals in the church were
heavy on my heart. The schedule in the last several months had been so hectic I
felt like the proverbial hamster on a treadmill. It seemed so hypocritical singing
“Joy to the World.” Where was that joy? Joy at the time seemed to be on life
support!
Before I went to bed it was time to get
the surprise bike for my son out of the station wagon. I pulled on a coat, exited into the
howling darkness and promptly slipped on the sidewalk. Everything was encrusted
in ice and covered with snow. In the last few hours the world outside had
frozen into an ice-skating rink. Slipping over to the car I discovered all the
doors were frozen shut. No door would unlock. The bike was trapped in a frozen
car and outside stood a frozen frustrated pastor. As I turned to go back to the
house, I noticed several lights lit at the church. “Great!” I thought, “Now I
have to slide down the parking lot to turn out lights!” I put on more layers
and some boots and cautiously inched my way to the church as the wind and snow
stung my face.
When I entered the church I saw lights in
the basement and heard noise in the boiler room. Opening the door I found Eby,
our part time custodian, working at the boiler. The only noise in the room was
the draft damper of the furnace opening and closing with each gust of wind
outside. “Eby, what in the world are you doing here on Christmas Eve?” I
quizzed. He explained that he noticed during the service the furnace was acting
strangely and sometimes would not reignite. He had to manually hit the restart
button several times. He was concerned that the pipes would freeze if the
furnace stayed off through the night. He worked and I watched for about an hour,
but the problem persisted. We discussed and prayed over what to do and decided
to take shifts restarting the furnace throughout the night. He took the first
shift until midnight and I would then relieve him.
Just before midnight I returned to the
church to begin my shift. The problem had persisted. We sat together in the
furnace room looking at the gauges on the boiler as water temperatures lowered
and praying it would restart this time. Just after midnight Eby suddenly said,
“Merry Christmas pastor!” I replied with less enthusiasm, “Merry Christmas
Eby.” There we sat on two upturned five gallon buckets and prayed for a
miracle. It didn’t come.
Half joking I said, “We ought to sing a
few carols while we wait.” Eby surprised me by agreeing. There in the furnace
room, with just the flapping of the furnace damper to accompany us, we sang a
couple of carols ending with “Silent Night.” As Eby stood I thanked him for his
efforts and I said, “What a lousy night.” He replied, “It could be worse,” and
turned and left.
I sat down on the five gallon bucket and
tried to settle in for my shift. Eby’s words echoed in my mind, “It could be
worse.” Mentally I thought, “How could it be any worse? Christmas Eve in a
furnace room!” Pulling my work coat closer abound my neck, I brooded over how
bad things were. Suddenly with crystal clarity I thought, “That’s right, things
could be worse!” I reflected how things were much worse for Jesus during the
night of his birth. Here I am focusing upon my problems and overlooking what
Jesus endured on that first Christmas. He left a perfect sinless environment to
come into a sin-scared world. He left the place where he occupied a position of
prominence to encounter the obscurity of a world that did not know him. He set
aside all of the riches of heaven to be born into a poor family. He left the
place where angels responded to his every desire to dwell on earth as a servant
to all. He came not for a life of ease but a life of hardship, challenge,
ridicule, betrayal, and death. He came because of love that looked past the
difficulties and disappointments.
A verse came to mind in that furnace room
challenging my faulty attitude, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through
his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Paul challenges us to “let
this mind be in you which was in Christ” (Philippians 2:5). Looking at Jesus’
birth as he came to earth has a way of adjusting one’s attitude – even in a
furnace room!
