by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Niggle. What kind of a name is that? One that probably only a mind like J.R.R. Tolkien could think up, imagine a character for and write into a short story. Which he did, by the way, in “Leaf By Niggle.”

Niggle is an odd little man who can’t quite seem to get everything–no, make that anything–done. He’s an artist who can’t finish a painting, a neighbor who gets grumpy with his neighbors and an errand runner who can’t find the people he is sent to call on. With the best of intentions, he misses things he should notice and gets distracted by things that are unimportant. We are, I suspect, more like Niggle than we care to admit.

We’re heading into the Christmas in America season. I realized it when Starbucks decorated their store on November 9th, and radio station FM 106.9 started playing 24-7 Christmas music just a few days later. We’re heading into Christmas in America, the season that is practically guaranteed to make you feel like Niggle: “I just couldn’t quite get it all done.”

• Couldn’t get all the presents
• couldn’t get them wrapped
• couldn’t get the Christmas cards done
• couldn’t get them mailed on time
• couldn’t go to all the office parties and family parties and friend parties
• couldn’t stay on my diet
• couldn’t get “the feeling” I thought I should have
• couldn’t find space in the middle of chaos
• couldn’t be creative with the kids
• couldn’t have people over
• couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t

When Tolkien dreamed up Niggle, he dreamed that Niggle’s life journey took a sudden jolt and ended. He found himself in a solitary place filled with bare routine and lonely projects. Somehow in the quiet of that afterlife, Niggle begins to realize that his earthly life had missed a good many things that were important, things he had once called “interruptions.”

A person can hardly read a good story like this without wondering what we ourselves may be missing. Especially at Christmas. There’s so much to miss.

If we are not careful, we will miss moments of good and deep conversation.

If we are not disciplined, we will pass by quiet moments where God speaks to us and we can hear.

If we are not diligent we will see way too much of the ordinary, way too little of the holy and perhaps worst of all, be unprepared to see the holy IN the ordinary.

Unexpected interruptions are often the ground that God meets us on. That is, after all, what the incarnation is all about. The remarkable miracle of the overwhelming love of God embodied in the lowliest and most helpless of creatures, a baby. Bruce Coburn’s song about Jesus’ birth says it well:“Redemption rips through the surface of time, in the cry of a tiny babe.”

You can’t really prepare for the unexpected, but you can do things that help your heart and mind stay open and available for God’s coming. Let me mention two.

1. When we lived in New Jersey years ago, Anne made a fabric Advent calendar with a pocket for each day and the words “Come, Lord Jesus” on the top. We still use it, some years more consistently than others. Inside each pocket is a symbol of Christmas (manger, Bible, star, etc) that velcros onto the top part of the calendar. We also put a little piece of paper into each pocket with one treat or activity written on it. Each day of Advent we remove the day’s symbol and fasten it on, and then read the piece of paper to give us all something to look forward to.

We can’t sustain a major activity each night, so many are very small and ordinary. Read a poem together. Watch A Christmas Carol (preferably the George C. Scott version!). Pick up Jesse from the airport. Take a walk before bed. Go to the Wednesday Night Dinner. Have a ½ hour reading time in the living room. Go for coffee. Set up the nativity scene on the mantle. Go to Christmas Eve worship.

The point is to pick some things that are doable and that can be easily planned ahead of time so that rather than adding to the “can’t-get-it-all-done” syndrome, they provide space to talk, reflect or be together as we mark the time toward Christmas.

This type of thing can be done as couples, singles or families, and you don’t need a pocketed calendar. The key is that you sit down right now with a calendar and write things in. Who do you want to be sure and see this month? Where will some spaces of quiet come? What small and ordinary things might be a gift to look forward to?

2. The second thing I want to suggest is that you not begin and end your celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th. It is a lot of pressure to put the climax of the month-long Advent waiting and anticipation onto one day. If the coming of Christ is the start of the most amazing story ever, we’ll need more than 24 hours to reflect on it. Don’t rush it.

At Bethany, we’ll follow ancient church tradition and live into Christmas as a season. In worship, we’ll linger in the stories of Christmas into early January.

• Keep the lights, the nativity scene and the Advent wreath out.
• Have people over.
• Play the carols.

If we have anything to learn from Tolkien’s Niggle, it’s this: it’s not about getting it all done. Rather, it’s about learning what is actually important.

Come, Lord Jesus.