Special Catastrophe of the Christmas Story

Christmas causes the worn-out world to pause for a moment. All of Earth takes a deep breath and celebrates the coming of the King. It recalls the familiar story in precise detail: uncomfortably pregnant Mary traveling per government mandate, no available rooms at the inn, the impromptu maternity ward in the barn, the sneaky wisemen throwing a baby shower. We know the specifics by heart, but the entire account still seems a bit odd to me.

Christmas seemed poorly conceived, destined to fail. God chose a messed-up family tree. He then selected unmarried, teenage, first-time parents. And the birth came during a time of killing baby boys. If I had been planning the saving of the world, I would have waited, at best. If I had written the story, the details would have been different.

This scheme seemed like an impending disaster, a catastrophe waiting to happen.

And in a way, it was.

A SPECIAL KIND OF CATASTROPHE

But this was no ordinary catastrophe, it was a special catastrophe.

A eucatastrophe.

A eucatastrophe is a sudden, favorable resolution, or rescue from certain doom. It is the sudden glimpse of goodness (eu-) appearing in an unexpected evil (catastrophe), just as all hope appears lost.

My son teaches college English and Composition. His love for words and books began early. Many Christmases included books like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. I never read either series. I wish I had. My sharing in his love of fiction ended at Toy Story and Berenstain Bears.

If I had been reading along with him, I would have known that eucatastrophe is woven into The Lord of the Rings books. Tolkien himself coined the word and said, “The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of man’s history.”

Christmas is the happy turn of a hard human history. It is the moment our Rescue arrived and saved us from certain doom. It is a glimpse of goodness in the unexpected manger: Eucatastrophe incarnate as hope pierced through our dark world.

OUR PERSONAL PART OF THE PLOT 

It happens on a large scale at Christmas, but as in all of Christianity, the grand scheme has to become personal. The eucatastrophe was always meant to happen on an individual level as well. Christ must enter each individual’s catastrophic history. The Everlasting Light must break through our daily despair.

So we occasionally try to pull God into our life story.

We can be deluded into thinking God is waiting around for us to ask Him to become part of our human narrative—our finite, self-centered little story starring us. We sometimes think inviting God into our storyline is the eucatastrophe.

I’ve been guilty of asking God to help me make a difference. I’ve wanted to have my own show, or at least an episode. And even as my battle with heart failure took an unexpected downturn one Christmas, I struggled with God’s authorship and my own significance in the plot.

From my journal:

Still tweaking meds and my device to figure out what is going on now with that I am not doing so well with my heart failure. Had an appointment today to “make some adjustments.”

The medical device rep came up to me in the waiting room with another medical professional. Gesturing to me, he said, “This is the one who had the remarkable improvement.” The assistant nodded that he understood and remembered. Somehow I felt burdened by that designation.

I feel like I am letting everyone down now by getting worse. I hope I can carry this story out. Or I can carry out whatever story God wants for my life. I feel inadequate and discouraged.

Or am I fooling myself? Is God even part of this at all?

BECOMING PART OF HIS STORY 

I was in the waiting room, waiting for God to enter my life story. I didn’t realize that I was, even in my doubt and brokenness, already part of His.

When that truth sinks in, it is freeing in all the best ways. We don’t have to design this setting, craft the plot, or finesse the ending. We are not the authors, not even the main characters. But we are part of the greatest novel ever written.

When we can fully embrace the brevity of our one life, we get a sense that we are part of the same ongoing story. After we are gone, the story doesn’t end. Life will continue, Christmas will be celebrated, children will be born. Eucatastrophes will keep happening. At that moment of realization, we are most connected to the eternal nature of Author God.

We are all part of a story, one never-ending plotline. That’s why I love The Story, a narrative retelling of Scripture. It tells the history of God and His people in chronological order. The Bible unfolds in novel form, giving someone like me, who came to grasp and appreciate God’s Word later in life, a framework for what can seem like disjointed Bible sagas. But even more importantly, it gives the sense that all human history is connected. Even now we are continuing the story, in chapters still being written, all authored by a faithful God who, throughout our checkered history, has refused to give up on us.

But surrendering to His plotline has always been subject to our own free will. Each individual life at some point makes a choice: Do we pull Him in for guest appearances in our trite short story, or do we become part of His grand everlasting one? Do we settle for our own catastrophe, or do we join His eucatastrophe?

This Christmas season invites us to give creative license of our lives back to the One who has been carefully writing the longform narrative from chapter one. When we make the decision to become part of eternal history, His story, He surely sees it as the greatest eucatastrophe of all.

The Baby arrived in the midst of a very special catastrophe to write each of us into the best plot ever written.

That’s true cause for celebration not only on Christmas Day, but every day.