Editor’s Note: If you missed the announcement, check out the Laundry Room for a free mindfulness devotional to help you stay present with God in the midst of the mundane. More on the way!
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
Isaiah 6:2 NRSVUE
Who do you view with an irreconcilable difference? Who have you washed your hands clean of?
This is an honest space. There is no one there to hold you accountable to whatever your answer is. There is no need to worry about shame or posturing. There is no mask to put on for someone else. I want you to think to yourself, honestly, who is irreconcilable to you. Who do you have such immense disconnection, bitterness, or outright hatred for, that there is nothing that could be done to bring you and them to peace?
I believe that there is something or someone for you because this year has proven to me that no relationship is ever safe from a rapid and ransacking abandonment. This year, I watched as families ripped apart, almost overnight. Sons no longer speaking with fathers, wives no longer loving husbands, mothers kicking out children and screaming at them to never come back. I’ve watched as thousands of bodies piled up in genocidal murder and hundreds disappear into terrorist caves while nations ponder which bodies are a tragedy and which are an unfortunate reality. I’ve watched as friends have ghosted friends and first dates have turned into crime scenes and we, all of us, play with time as though it is infinite instead of rapidly careening us ever closer to a sudden and inescapable death.
I’ve watched as we’ve lived like we have time to kill and waste by bickering and brokering who is in and who is out. Like the answer would matter even a little if we found out the real answer.
This year, and the past few months especially, I have witnessed the incalculable inhumanity with which we greet each other, the utter and ultimate dehumanization, the assertion of arbitrary boundaries between who is deserving of breath in their lungs and who should be snuffed out.
My grief is deep and my bitterness is sharp and it is making the list of people with whom I am deeply and profoundly estranged from longer by the second. There are a few people I could name who I genuinely believe have made the world a far less inhabitable place much more often than they’ve made it tolerable. I think if I were a different kind of person, and I told you about them, what they have done, you would be quick to agree with me.
There have been some words I’ve heard uttered this year so disgustingly beyond the pale that I would no longer be human were I to forget them. I believe I have irreconcilable differences with a few people, a few political parties, a few countries. And I’m willing to bet if you’re honest with yourself, you do too.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 NRSVUE
In the midst of this almost unbearable grief, I hear the call of the prophet Isaiah naming a coming ruler who will be called “Wonderful Counselor” and I think yes! We need that. We need someone to guide us, someone to clarify all of this mess for us, provide us a way out.
This ruler is called “Mighty God” and I think yes, I need something big to submit to, something outside of the corrupt influence of humans who never seem to tell the full truth.
This ruler is called “Everlasting Father” and I think yes, we need something permanent in a life that throws away relationships the second they get less than ideal. We discard people when we have to have an uncomfortable conversation or sacrifice our own pleasure for the good of someone else.
And finally, this ruler is called “Prince of Peace” and I have fully and finally lost it, the floodgates of my tear ducts fully open and I think yes, Isaiah, what I actually need, more than answers or bigness or permanence or advice is peace. I need peace as an antidote to my anger, peace as a balm for my grief.
Peace. I need peace.
And it is for this ruler who I recognize I so deeply need and long for, that I make the journey on a camel’s back to see. I need to witness this ruler who can sort out all our mess.
I ride in my anger, in my grief, in my cynicism, and suicidality. I ride because I am convinced there has to be more than this meaningless, cruel, inhospitable hell I find myself waking to each day. There has to be more than shrapnel in the necks of children. There has to be a solution that isn’t posting their dead bodies on a 24-hour-long Instagram story and shaming your friends for not doing the same thing. There has to be a world where a mother would never look into the eyes of her child and say it would be better if they were dead. There has to be a world where we praise God instead of talking about which denomination of Christians are going to burn in hell as we laugh at them from our heavenly hideaway.
It is with all of this that I ride on the back of my camel to see the ruler prophesied to reveal this kind of world in me and in the people I hate.
So, friends, if I’m equally honest with you, I think if I’m ending that journey at a barn that reeks of manure, if I’m ending it at a ruler so small he could fit in the crook of my arm and so fragile I could give him brain damage by shaking him, I really think my first reaction would be the kind of anger so hot and sharp it would come out first as a laugh.
To think that a baby could bring peace to a world that eviscerates much older children with bullets and bombs is laughable.
To think that a son could bring healing to a world that orphans children, not because their parents are dead, but because the children are dead to the parents, is an insult.
To think that a person could unite people hellbent on being right is unrealistic at best.
For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone; in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
Ephesians 2:14-22 NRSVUE
But then I think about the streets in heaven so full of abundance the streets are littered with gold and a baby who chose to be born without a room. I think about a place without tears and an infant full of colic tears. I think about a place where predator and prey live together without violence and a man who would be nailed to a cross and slit open.
And I think maybe I don’t really know what it’s like to be genuinely irreconcilable. Maybe this baby is capable after all.
Bryce Van Vleet is the #1 selling author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He also hosts the podcast Death in Dakota and sells poetry art here. You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).
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