The Christmas Flu

The calendar for Christmas vacation lined up great this year. Things started with a weekend, a couple of free weekdays before Christmas Eve, another weekend, and the same pattern for New Year’s. I thought there would be a lot of opportunity for rest and Christmas prep and maybe, if things fell into place, a chance to get some work done around the house. The break started off well enough with a lovely dinner party — an annual affair with friends we see far too rarely, one of our favorite nights of the year. I didn’t sleep well after that. Maybe it was an anomaly to be explained by rich food, a seventeen-year-old port, and the excitement of an Alabama playoff victory. Two nights later, the same experience after family Christmas number 1. I woke up on Monday morning out of sorts but able to walk the dog, run errands, and take kids to all the places they needed to be. My wife and I were getting the kitchen ready for some cooking, but after one batch of sausage balls, I was tapped out. And somewhere, deep in the dark recesses of my psyche, I heard the dreaded word.

Flu.

Our oldest son was running a mild fever, but surely not. This was Christmas, after all. We had plans! Dear friends from New York were due in town the next day, and we were working on an impromptu gathering at our house. Noticing that my fever had turned me into a shivering, sweaty mess, my wife sent them a text — probably read in a crowded LaGuardia terminal — calling off all plans. Sometime that morning I made my way to the doc-in-a-box and sat in a room with a glorious cross section of Over the Mountain Birmingham. We waited in a hazy state of delirium for our names to be called, half asleep and desperate to get a diagnosis, a prescription, and make our way back home.

Waiting rooms are sad places — not the saddest, of course — but sad all the same, and yet they deeply humanize us. The well-heeled and the downtrodden all take a number and hope for the best; influenza is no respecter of bank accounts or college degrees. I saw one prominent local leader led to the exam room by her husband gently holding her elbow, white as a ghost and shaky on her feet. I leaned my head against the wall and tried to sleep while I waited for my name to be called. A quick diagnosis and an unsuccessful trip to the pharmacist were all that stood in the way of my bed, where I hardly moved for another 24 hours.

By the night of Christmas Eve, things had improved. My wife found the prized Xofluza, and I began to recover. We ate cookies and watched Die Hard while she wrapped presents. But this Christmas wasn’t the usual routine. Three of us stayed home for the annual Christmas Eve breakfast (the takeout biscuits don’t hit the same, let me tell you). There was no Christmas Eve browsing of shops, far less cooking, no church, and Christmas Day with extended family got bumped all the way to New Year’s Day. I walked the dog with a shuffle, like a homeless drifter in my own neighborhood, and we lost track of the days not out of fun but out of a NyQuil-induced fog. A trip to the pediatrician confirmed that all the kids had it, too, and we grabbed a prescription for my wife — a prophetic and necessary move.

In all of it, my mind wandered back to my Advent readings, chapter after chapter from the book of Isaiah. There the prophet described a wrecked landscape, a kingdom cut down by war, exile, and genocide. I have been spared all that, thank God, but a wicked bout of flu during the holidays has its own leveling effect. All of my plans for the holidays, my very real hopes and dreams, were dashed by an invisible virus. In a true sense, I was cut down to something minimal that was so much less than what I wanted the week of Christmas to be.

And yet Isaiah’s promise rang true for me as it did in its own time. In the middle of my own wreckage, Christmas really did come. The day arrived on the calendar regardless of whatever fanfare I wanted to give it. The reality is that I couldn’t do much to celebrate the birth of Christ. In my contagious state, there was almost nothing I could offer, and yet Christ came to my family, to my neighborhood, to me.

That’s the beauty of the gospel. It simply shows up, often when we least expect it but always when we need it most. There is no ask on the part of God; no wish list, no lookbook, no gift guide. He is the same gracious God who kept his promise of restoration to his people. Advent assures us over and over again: The King is coming! No matter how sick we are, no matter how ill-prepared and overwhelmed, we are assured that Christ will come for us. Though we may find ourselves disheveled at Christmas, the inevitable arrival of December 25 is the fulfillment of God’s promise. He said he would come to restore a broken world, and he was true to his word.

It might be easy to dismiss all of this on the grounds that flu eventually goes away while other, more serious maladies of the body and mind remain. That’s a point well-taken — some pains aren’t resolved by a potent prescription. Yet the words of the prophet Isaiah are a gracious and emphatic reminder that a tender shoot grows from the tree stumps of a waylaid kingdom. No matter what has brought us to our knees, there remains a God who loves us and identifies with us, who promises that he will not break a bruised reed or put out a faintly burning candle wick.

This Christmas — like so many others — did not go according to plan. Unlike many others where we all manage to bend and flex in order to accomplish our ends, almost everything was scrapped. One thing remained, and that was the promise of God’s gracious love for this and every sinner, found in the arrival of his infant son in a borrowed stable, full of grace and truth.

Weeks after the flu has abated and all the gifts have lost their luster, life again threatens to overwhelm us. The spring semester is in full swing, students must plan their next academic year, summer camps must be confirmed (and paid for!). And taxes, heaven help us, April 15 comes like an inevitable ghoul. We don’t forget on purpose — it’s just another thing left undone. It won’t be long before our lives feel like that Old Testament wasteland, harrowed by spring break and the semester’s end and summer’s brutal heat. There is really no end to it, but thankfully, there is no end to the gospel’s undeserved intrusion in our lives, the gracious news of pardon and restoration for sinners.