There are movies like “Miracle on the 34th Street” and “Christmas Miracle”. There are songs about miracles and poems that try and push the miracle imagery. The miracles of Christmas in the Bible are pretty subdued. Angels and barns and shepherds and a star and wise men and an escape from a mad king. Jesus was born into a real world with the real political intrigues of a murderous king and just after He is born He becomes a political refugee. The politics of taxes and enrollments and the displacement of people to serve interests of despots and kings is a part of the story that we often forget. The miraculous intervention of angels to protect the Magi and the Christ child are almost sidelights to the announcement to the shepherds that result in a “multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying …..Glory to God in the Highest and peace upon those on whom His favor rests”. Announcing the birth of the Savior to shepherds, a miracle, is also seen by many as a political act. Politics literally means “relating to citizens” and God related to the citizens in interesting ways. Everything about Advent and Christmas is God relating to citizens as liberator.
We are not supposed to intermingle politics and religion, or so we are told, and that is impossible. Christians can face the politics of life with a cold eyed stare and speak to power about the coming of a true King and a true Kingdom. We should speak up when the politicians use the language and impulses of Christian faith to maintain power and control and even corrupt those impulses.
So one last political statement before the serious business of continuing the reason this blog exists and that is show the connections up here in the North country. I can’t help it as I listened to Harry Reid whisper his last invectives of a dying career. As he retires and goes back to his real job of managing Gringotts, he made me remember the true nastiness of the last 8 years of political history. Watching the orphans of Allepo mourn 500,000 dead and remembering redlines and promises, I prayed for a Christmas miracle while remembering the fecklessness of politicians. Pondering legacies can be a sad exercise if all you have is managing to allow anyone to go to the bathroom wherever they want and getting twenty million people insurance by taking it away from thousands of others. There is time for legacy polishing however. Think of this. This government could not, after 4 years of trying, figure out who was in charge of politicizing the IRS. This government could not, after three yeas of trying figure out who should be charged for a conspiracy to commit the murder of Veterans by messing with their appointments. With that history the demand that the CIA give a full accounting of the so called Russian interference in this election by the end of the month would be a true Christmas miracle.
Another miracle I would like to see is an analysis by the press of the fact that the current President knew about the hacking months ago. That means that we have a simple syllogism to analyze if any of this is true.
The Russians hack was designed to defeat Hilary Clinton.
The current President knew of the hacks and did and said nothing.
The current President wanted to defeat Hilary Clinton.
If the so called press and media would dig into that one we might have another Christmas miracle.
