Persons who know me know I am a fan of Charles Schultz and his Peanut cartoons. He is an inciteful lay theologian. I don’t know anyone who perceives and probes the world of children and garners from it such great truth and wisdom as he in his Peanut cartoons. One year during the Christmas season, he put into drawing and dialogue one of those common exchanges between children that has deep meaning. Sally asked Charlie Brown, “Is it Christmas yet?” “Four more days,” responds Charlie Brown. “How come it takes so long?” Sally wants to know. Without even looking up from the TV, Charlie Brown gets off one of those off-the-cuff philosophical statements that one can chew on all day. “Christmas is on the top of steep hill,” he said, “and the closer you get to it, the steeper the hill is.”
The answer baffled Sally, but it sounded profound, so she is convinced and she repeats it to Snoopy. “Christmas is at the top of a steep hill.” Every child can identify with that. For us adults, it seems as though we have picked the last bit of meat from the turkey bone and made a cold sandwich at Thanksgiving time before we rush to finish our Christmas shopping. Christmas leaps out of hiding seemingly and rushes at us. But we don’t have to jostle our memories too hard to recall how as children the days after Thanksgiving would drag endlessly on ––poking along, and it seemed Christmas would never come. Charlie Brown captured the sentiment of children – Christmas is on the top of a steep hill and the closer you get to it, the steeper the hill is.
We’re in the Advent season which began November 28, the beginning of the “Christian Year.” On the Christian calendar, Advent season begins four Sundays preceding Christmas Day. It is a season of waiting and preparation.
Charlie Brown’s word is not alone the sentiment of anticipating children who anxiously await Christmas morning; the “real Christmas” is anchored at the top of a steep hill. Men had longed and prayed for the Messiah. The years of sorrow and suffering, darkness and death had dragged on endlessly. Men had groped through mazes of confusion and indirection, and grappled with mystery and meaning. God was speaking to them, but they couldn’t understand. He was coming to them, but his being was blurred. Then the time was fulfilled, and Jesus came.
I urge you… in this Advent Season make your climb up the steep hill of Christmas a time of meaningful preparation by asking,
Who is this Jesus…really
Why did he come?
What does his coming mean to me?
How do I share that meaning with others?