I always feel relief on January 2nd. Whew, I made it through another holiday dash and persevered through certain anniversaries.
Sometimes the relief is kissed with optimism. I’m filled with the hope of the Christ Child. With a fresh calendar in front of me, I’m ready to give my New Year’s resolutions a hearty go.
Other times though, the post-holiday relief gets backed into a corner by discouragement. The new calendar holds more tension than tranquility. How things will go this year, I simply do not know.
This year I find myself in the latter camp. Lord knows I tried hard to replace the spinning news with fa-la-la-la-la-ing for two weeks. But as the New Year breaks open so too do families, bodies, and hope-filled dreams. The laments of old carry over into the new and I wonder with despair: what am I do to in this dark night?
And then,
in the dawn,
He sings a way forward.
The hymn in my prayer book for the day “just so happens” to be Good King Wenceslas.
Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel.
Written in 1853, John Mason Neale sets the scene in the first stanza. King Wenceslas, who could have been entirely caught up in all the merriment of festive tables deep with gifts, sweet and savory foods, and hot drinks on a frosty night, notices a poor man. It’s the first clue as to why this king is called “good.”
"Hither, page, and stand by me, if you know it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes' fountain."
I wonder if the peasant in the author’s mind is young. The fellow has made his home next to Saint Agnes’ fountain, perhaps in hopes that Agnes, martyred at 12 or 13-years-old, will see his tender age, hear his prayers, and send comfort.
Whatever the case, the story begs the question: on a night when the frost is cruel, will the king return to the heavily-laden tables or remember the poor?"Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither,
You and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither."
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together,
Through the cold wind's wild lament and the bitter weather.
The contrast here is striking. The page and monarch go throughout what I imagine is a beautifully-decorated banquet hall with a roaring fire, preparing bundles of food, wine, and logs. Hoisting them on their own backs, they leave the warm celebration, and head out into the bitter weather.
"Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger, Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer."
Darker, stronger, go no longer. We are not unique in feeling this. The winds have always blown. Through every century.
“O Lord, how much longer?” we all ask when the gales of godlessness blow.
And then,
the perspective pivots,
and the king sings a way forward.
"Mark my footsteps, my good page, tread now in them boldly,
You shall find the winter's rage freeze your blood less coldly."
The king makes no promise that the freezing fury will soon subside. The darkness will not stop being dark. The rage will be the rage. So what is the page to do? Find warmth treading in the footsteps of the King.
In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;“Beautiful on the mountains,” or in the case of this poem, the dinted snow “are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings.” Want warm feet? Do these things, says the King who is not wearied by the winter’s freeze.
Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure, while God's gifts possessing,
You who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing.
Where is the blessing? In the giving away of God’s gifts possessing.
“In a fallen world,” says Ann Voskamp, it is “the ones on the road, in the fields, on the wall, pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and the Advent coming again. Brilliant people don’t deny the dark; they are the ones who never stop looking for His light in everything.”1
Brilliant people don’t deny the dark. They leave the feast with gifts, follow the Good King on the road, in the fields, on the walls, and into the night, looking and blessing with God’s good gifts. And what do we find ourselves possessing in the proceeding? Warm blessings.
Lord and King, come quickly, sing to us in the storm.
In this new year,
there are ancient steps,
to bravely bear hope and light.
In them is warmth for the weary.
- From Ann Voskamp’s book “The Greatest Gift” page 113 ↩︎
Lord, Come Quickly 
this is a good word for us today, Nicole. Timely for our days, will we take care of the poor? For that is where blessing is found. Thank for for sharing your words 💗
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Indeed Liz, there is warmth to be found in the steps of the King!👣
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