The impromptu and unofficial breaks in the conflict for a short time at Christmas in 1914 are a matter of history. For a short time, along the Western Front, English, French and German troops paused in their attempts at slaughter and exchanged greetings instead. There are reports of football being played in ‘no-man’s land’ between the two front lines.
I am not sure that the troops involved woold have been thinking about theology, but at the moment they universally accepted that Christmas was a matter for all nations they stated, visibly and in defiance of international declarations of war, that the God of Peace was God of all nations.
107 years later, all nations are working together, to some degree and least, to manage a global pandemic that has been going on for almost two years, and people are tired. That the first world war lasted for four years does not bear thinking about. Two and a bit more years of this uncertainty, which is less severe that being in a trench, makes us baulk.
There has been a lot of angst in the political air in Westminster recently. There often is; politics has more of the durability of the 100-years war than a brief skirmish and yet it is not only among the political leadership that tension is a problem.
Recently I experienced the extreme out-pouring of a rabid ‘anti-vaxer’; we all know those who are genuinely terrified of COVID infection. The extremes would be a great study in human nature where they not so distressing for everyone. Elsewhere, the new virtue-signalling tendency of the moves by some to block freedom of speech in universities and on other platforms where healthy debate should be heard, to keep us balanced, risks narrowing some of the healthy challenge that broadens and exercises the human mind.
Thinking again about the 1914 Christmas Truce, I realise how tiring the tension becomes for us all. Have we forgotten that the God of peace, who came among us as Jesus Christ came equally and for all people? We may have overlooked God’s intention temporarily, but surely we have not lost sight of it absolutely, have we?
As you enjoy Christmas and remember the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem in whatever way you remember it where you are, remember to have a break from the tensions we make for ourselves that wear us down.
A very happy, peaceful and blessed Christmas to all who read my weekly thoughts.
With much love, William.
A prayer
Love who came down at Christmas, wash over us and relax us; soak the aching of stressed bodies and minds and refresh us with new life and hope; and the peace of God that passes all understanding be with us all. Amen.