Not “calm,” not “bright”...
A wondrous Christmas hymn, “Silent Night” was written by a German priest Josef Mohr in ( maybe before) 1816.
Needless to say, northern Europe in the early 1800’s was neither calm nor bright, nor holy, nor at peace, nor filled with love’s pure light, nor redeemed by grace.
There was a high infant mortality rate, crop failures, ravaging disease, and horrendous slaughter. Europe had had almost continuous, calamitous war for 25 years! No “calm” there.
Nothing bright or holy!
Napoleonic troops and anti-French troops had ravaged back and forth. 558,000 French-lead soldiers died during the campaign into Russia. In 1813, over 600,000 soldiers fought in one battle alone at Leipzig, Saxony. As many as 110,000 were killed or wounded.
Approximately 1 million or more civilian died from that war. Total deaths reached between 3 to even 6 million! Then Germany as a confederation was created from parts of the former Holy Roman Empire, but German nationalists assassinated leaders…
Speaking of assassinations, that takes us back to the time of Jesus’s birth in Roman Palestine under Herod the Great in about 4 B.C.E.
Not a time of love, peace, goodness, Godliness, or light either.
Nor was Britain at the birth of the Quaker movement in the 1600’s. Strangely, not even the early Quakers waged peace, contrary to many Friends histories and popular understanding! Many of the early Quakers fought in the great slaughter of the English Civil War.
Traagically, George Fox who would later emphasize the Lamb’s War, the peaceful way of Jesus, at first urged the Puritan killer Oliver Cromwell to carry forth his holy war all the way to Rome!! “Let thy soldiers go forth…that thou may rock the nations as a cradle.”
Not at all like the cradled-manger of Jesus.
So much for “silent night, holy night”...
Instead, even with those Friends of Jesus, the Children of Light, there was an ocean of darkness at first...
Nor is there any peace and holiness in the 21st century. Multi-millions of Christian Russian Orthodox soldiers and their leaders continue to invade and slaughter thousands of innocent Ukrainians.
Hundreds of Ukrainian children have been kidnapped and taken to Christian Orthodox Russia.
Then there is the endless massacres of Palestine-Israel, the Sudan, etc.
Consider that powerful “Silent Night” meditative song by Simon and Garfunkel back in the 1960’s, also a horrific time of slaughter.
What a paradoxical contrast between the way of Jesus versus how Christians, Muslims, and Jews trash Jesus’ way now.
May we truly witness of the love and peace of God in this often Christ-less, unholy season.
Yet still hoping--despite endless despairing news--
in the Light of Care, Good, True, Just...
Daniel Wilcox
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