{"id":5132,"date":"2025-12-25T19:49:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5132"},"modified":"2025-12-25T19:49:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:49:42","slug":"god-took-the-long-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/25\/god-took-the-long-way\/","title":{"rendered":"God Took the Long Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder ways that we can ready ourselves to receive Jesus, once again, into our own hearts.<\/em>

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.\u00a0

His oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, or Charlie, had enlisted to fight for the North in the Civil War \u2013 against his father\u2019s 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.\u00a0Conflicted and disillusioned about his faith \u2013 especially the seemingly empty promises of a so-called Prince of Peace \u2013 Longfellow wrote a poem called \u201cChristmas Bells.\u201d

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!<\/em>

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!<\/em>

And in despair I bowed my head; \u201cThere is no peace on earth,\u201d I said.<\/em>
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good-will to men!<\/em>

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: \u201cGod is not dead, nor doth he sleep;<\/em>
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men.\u201d<\/em>

Here\u2019s a 60-year-old recording of \u201cI Heard the Bells on Christmas Day\u201d by Burl Ives<\/a>.\u00a0If that name doesn\u2019t ring a bell, he\u2019s the snowman \/ narrator of the famous Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer <\/em>animated special.

During worship services in December, it\u2019s not uncommon to see deep emotions in the faces of those singing Christmas carols. Why is that so?\u00a0Music is the language of the heart.\u00a0And when the heart is broken, tears flow.\u00a0

Longfellow goes from joy to despair to hope in just a few short stanzas, reflecting a universal human longing:\u00a0Since God has promised to heal our broken world, why hasn\u2019t he already done so?

The answer is that God seems to prefer the long way of doing things. \u00a0

It didn\u2019t have to be this way. He didn\u2019t have to turn a Bethlehem feeding trough into a maternity ward.\u00a0

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.\u00a0Or he could have snapped his fingers and saved the whole world instantaneously.\u00a0Or 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\u2019t 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.\u00a0

But God didn\u2019t opt for shortcuts.\u00a0He took the long way.\u00a0And that remains his primary way of relating to us.

Many of us continue to hope that God will change his mind \u2013 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.\u00a0

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.\u00a0

For many of us, 2025 has been a year we\u2019re more than ready to leave behind.

Incivility, insecurity, and something that feels like insanity \u2013 local, national, and global \u2013 seem to dominate every news cycle.

But God has declared that ultimately \u201cthe wrong shall fail, the right prevail.\u201d 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\u2019s just possible that his words, 162 years later, are the very things we need to take to heart on this Christmas Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,9],"class_list":["post-5132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-christmas-carols"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5134,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5132\/revisions\/5134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}