Sharing the space with my husband...

From the Pastor’s Desk
Rev. Dr. Thomas Minton
Disciples Christian Church
Nevada, MO

As I sit here with thoughts about what to write careening about in my head like pool balls when the starting player breaks, I do not know where the thoughts are going or if any of them will go into one of the six pockets on the table. Nor do I know if any of them will line up for a successful following shot.

Where shall I go with this? This probably doesn’t sound very spiritual or holy. Perhaps you are thinking of the words from The Music Man, “Pool! That starts with “p” and that rhymes with “t” and that stands for trouble! Right here in River City.”

No respectable, church-going boy would darken a pool hall door, if even to drop off the daily newspaper on his delivery route. Not in my home town. It just wasn’t the proper thing to do. Much to my mother’s chagrin, I or my brother sometimes did, though. Usually got some pretty good tips, or a candy bar out of it, too! Especially around Christmas time.

What is it about Christmas that puts people in a cheerful, generous mood? “Scrooge” is the scorn of all Christmas Carols and no one likes to be thought of as a “Scrooge”. Not even the old men sitting along the wall in a darkened basement pool hall that smelled of Prince Albert smoking tobacco and open spittoons. Sometimes I even tried to hold my breath from the time I entered the door on one end of the room until I got out the door at the other end. If one of them stopped me to give me a nickel to buy a “soda-pop” or invited me to pick out my favorite candy bar from the display, I couldn’t hold it. I had to breathe the pool hall air. At the age of 10 or 11, I was unsure if the air in that pool hall might not infect me with whatever was so dreadful about that sinister place. I just noticed that at Christmas time the air was different—lighter, cleaner, cheerier. And everyone was friendlier. Or so it seemed.

What is it about Christmas? Could it be that since that starlit night in Bethlehem, there is something in the air that lightens the mood, lifts the spirit of a human being, even the old men who sat along the walls of a darkened, tepid pool hall whiling away their time and spinning tales that they themselves didn’t even believe? Was it perhaps that sense of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love that marks the Advent of a coming Savior, the Christ child? Was it the reminders of the song of angels, declaring “Peace on earth, good will toward all”?

Where is that peace? Where is the good will toward all? It is in the heart, the words, the hands, the feet of those who look back to Bethlehem this time of year and remember “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the authority shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace”—the same one who says, “Follow me.”
This story is based on several real things: the pool hall, the paper boy and his mother, soda pops and candy bars, old men, the smoking tobacco and spittoons, the fear of the unknown and the lure of the forbidden. But the greatest reality of all is this: God coming among us as one of us so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that through believing we might have life in his name—all year long.