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Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent – which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 – followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God’s own Son into the world. Throughout December we’ll ponder ways that we can ready ourselves to receive Jesus, once again, into our own hearts.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was sick with grief as Christmas approached in 1863.
He was still mourning the death of his wife Frances, who had died in a house fire.
His oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, or Charlie, had enlisted to fight for the North in the Civil War – against his father’s wishes. On December 1 Longfellow got word that Charlie had been severely wounded at the Battle of New Hope Church in Virginia.
While personally tending Charlie in the days that followed, Longfellow often heard church bells. Conflicted and disillusioned about his faith – especially the seemingly empty promises of a so-called Prince of Peace – Longfellow wrote a poem called “Christmas Bells.”
I heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old, familiar carols play
And wild and sweet their words repeat of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come, the belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said.
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men.”
Here’s a 60-year-old recording of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” by Burl Ives. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the snowman / narrator of the famous Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer animated special.
During worship services in December, it’s not uncommon to see deep emotions in the faces of those singing Christmas carols. Why is that so? Music is the language of the heart. And when the heart is broken, tears flow.
Longfellow goes from joy to despair to hope in just a few short stanzas, reflecting a universal human longing: Since God has promised to heal our broken world, why hasn’t he already done so?
The answer is that God seems to prefer the long way of doing things.
It didn’t have to be this way. He didn’t have to turn a Bethlehem feeding trough into a maternity ward.
God could have hand-picked a few hundred of his favorite people and taken them away and given them a graduate education in the truth, leaving the rest of the world in darkness. Or he could have snapped his fingers and saved the whole world instantaneously. Or God could have sent a full-grown Messiah down to earth in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics and brought all of history to a close.
God didn’t do any of those things, even though there were groups of people in the first century who were betting their lives that he was in fact locked into one of those strategies.
But God didn’t opt for shortcuts. He took the long way. And that remains his primary way of relating to us.
Many of us continue to hope that God will change his mind – that he will provide a prayerful formula we can recite, or a weekend seminar we can attend, or an amazing product that we can purchase in three easy installments that will answer all of our questions and resolve all of our issues.
The Christmas story, however, is Exhibit A that God often takes the long way.
He favors long periods of time in which we learn how to pray, to trust, and to follow him even when it appears that all is lost and hope is nowhere to be seen.
For many of us, 2025 has been a year we’re more than ready to leave behind.
Incivility, insecurity, and something that feels like insanity – local, national, and global – seem to dominate every news cycle.
But God has declared that ultimately “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail.” Christmas is his downpayment on that promise.
Longfellow would probably have been surprised to learn that his private reflections would become a Christmas carol.
But it’s just possible that his words, 162 years later, are the very things we need to take to heart on this Christmas Day.