All Is Calm And Bright

All Is Calm and Bright

When I asked my eighty-seven-year-old aunt to name her favorite Christmas carol, she replied without hesitating, “Silent Night.” I was surprised. This is the aunt whose home was the nexus of many a family holiday gathering. The music I most associate with her at Christmas is something a bit more upbeat by Dean Martin or Andy Williams. But she said, “Silent Night.”

Sometimes, when you know something well, you cease to recognize its goodness. I’m afraid I’ve become numb to “Silent Night.” I mouth the words now without connecting them to anything in my heart. But when I try to hear this carol as if it were new to me, one line lights up in contrast to the others around it: “All is calm, all is bright.”

Calm and bright are not words that seem in sync with each other or with the world in which we live. But together they evoke a longing and a curiosity. Whisper them together now, under your breath. Really. No one’s listening. “Calm and bright. Calm and bright.” What do you feel?

I feel peace. And hope. Calm and bright are common, everyday words for immanence and transcendence. The calming peace of Christ lies in his nearness. He has come. He is here. And the bright hope found in his presence is, in baby form, not so much as to overwhelm. His transcendent glory is a flame that could incinerate and stupefy the merest man or woman—but in the Christ child it is a bright gleam of hope I’m not afraid to be near.

Because “all is calm, all is bright,” I can sleep in the heavenly peace of Christ.

Peace is . . . the one thing that is permanent. Strife has only a temporary tenure. Trouble is like a cloud that cannot last. It is like a shadow that must pass. But peace is the eternal blue in God’s sky which clouds may dim, but not destroy. Peace is . . . God’s program for our world, and He Who is to reign forever and ever has said: “Peace I leave with you.”^a

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you.

John 14:27, NASB

^a James I. Vance, In the Breaking of the Bread: A Volume of Communion Addresses (New York: Revell, 1922), 65.