Country music star Travis Tritt spent many years playing out-of-the-way joints before he made it big in the music industry. He reports that many of the bars were danger- ous places, with drunk fans starting fights over the smallest matters. But Tritt found a unique way to keep the peace in such situations. As he says, “‘Silent Night’ proved to be my all-time lifesaver. Just when [bar fights]

started getting out of hand, when bikers were reaching for their pool cues and rednecks were heading for the gun rack, I’d start playing ‘Silent Night.’ It could be the middle of July — I didn’t care. Sometimes they’d even start crying, standing there watching me sweat and play Christmas carols.”

— “Twang! The Ultimate Book of Country Music Quotations,” compiled by Raymond Obstfeld and Sheila Burgener (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1997), 47.

I WONDER WHAT GOD FELT

A number of years ago a couple traveled to the offices of an Adoption Society in England to receive a baby. They had been on the waiting list a long time. They had been interviewed and carefully scrutinized. Now at last their dreams were to be fulfilled. But their day of happiness was another’s pain.

Arriving at the offices of the Society they were led up a flight of stairs to a waiting room. After a few minutes they heard someone else climbing the stairs. It was the young student mother whose baby was to be adopted. She was met by the lady responsible for the adoption arrangements and taken into another room. Our friends heard a muffled conversation and a few minutes later footsteps on the stairs as the young mother left. They heard her convulsive sobbing until the front door of the office was closed. Then, there was silence.

The lady in charge then conducted them next door. In a little crib was a six week old baby boy. On a chair beside it was a brown paper bag containing a change of clothes and two letters. One of these, addressed to the new parents, thanked them for providing a home for her baby and acknowledged that under the terms of the adoption each would never know the other’s identity. Then the young mother added one request. Would they allow her little son to read the other letter on his eighteenth birthday? She assured them that she had not included any information about her identity. The couple entrusted that letter to a lawyer and one day the young man will read the message which his mother wrote on the day when with breaking heart, she parted with him.

I wonder what she wrote? If I had to condense all I feel about life and love into a few precious words what would I say? I would have no time for trivia. I would not be concerned about economics, politics, the weather, the size of house or the type of car. At such a time I would want to dwell on the profundities, on what life was all about and what things were absolutely essential.1

Ed. NOTE: I wonder what God felt when Jesus left Heaven to come to earth as a babe? And I wonder what he felt when Jesus was on the cross taking upon himself the burden of your sins and mine and God had to turn his back on him? And I wonder how you and I feel when we remember his love and sacrifice … and how God feels when people turn their back on him and reject him?