Creating Silent Night

We all know the hymn. A classic. A simple song that paints the picture of a calm bright night and the wonder of a mild newborn child and his mother. The story goes that the hymn was written in 1816 by a young priest in Austria named Joseph Mohr shortly after the Napoleonic wars had done their damage.

How little times have changed. 1816 had climate issues, war, unrest. By the time the Napoleonic Wars were over, 500,000 Austrians were dead, both combatants and civilians. Yet a priest in Austria took a walk, observing the peace among a quiet town after all the strife and pain and wrote a beautiful hymn that we sing 200 years later.

That Christmas night around the manager wasn't quiet, have you ever been in a barn or around a newborn? Neither is known for being quiet for any extended period of time. Silent Night may have been written in a time of peace, but it followed years of chaos and destruction.

We're surrounded by chaos and divisiveness frequently, constantly on the news, on every media platform. So how do we create a silent night amidst all the mayhem? With intentionality. By making the choice to turn off the noise. Shut off the screens, power down the discord and settle in with a warm mug, a Christmas tree, and live conversations instead of comments and story responses. I promise laughing together feels better than the void of social media arguments and the rabbit hole of bad news.

It is still possible to find peace in the chaos. It is still possible to see the person beyond the screen. It takes intentionality to search for the silence in the noise, but then again, it always has: 200 years ago when a song was written after the destruction of years of war, and 2,000 years ago when a mother ignored the less than ideal conditions for her newborn and ,"treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19).