This last year 2020 and now 2021 has been likely the hardest and most overwhelming years of my life, and I’ve had some challenging ones.  With sudden changes all over the world, lockdowns, massive changes in our society, and a lot of anger about loss of freedoms and questions about direction as I just experienced loss of a relationship and struggle with direction I just feel, in spite of some good monetary benefits, more impoverished than ever and chaotic as I look at how this last year has unfolded in my life crushing new hopes and dreams that I have had.  This however has been an incredible opportunity to have to continually surrender my fears and ask the Lord for serenity beyond circumstance!

 

For these reasons I believe that it is time to release a little review of a film called Little Drummer Boy (although as I have fewer songs it will be in the song section and the song is included on the website connected to the review which shows scenes from the film).  While it is a Christmas film from the 1960’s using a unique style of animation, after It’s a Wonderful LIfe it may actually be my favorite Christmas film.  The main character in the short 25 minute film, a little boy with a gift for drumming loses his family unexpectedly with his parents being unjustly murdered.  He then has a rage and resentment in his heart. That is until he brings this poverty to Jesus, including all his loss and brokenness, and sees a miracle of grace approaching the Babe in the Manger after following the Star to Bethlehem shortly after seeing the Magi.  What does he learn, we know the song, as the Magi beckon him forward with all his wounds and pain.  The famous Christmas song Little Drummer Boy tells us

 

“Come they told me Pa rum pum pum pum. A new born King to see Pa rum pum pum pum. Our finest gifts we bring pa rum pum pum. To lay before the King Pa rum pum pum pum. So to honor Him Pa rum pum pum pum…. When we come...  Little baby Pa rum pum pum pum. I am a poor boy too. Pa rum pum pum pum. I have no gift to bring pa rum pum pum. That’s fit to give our King Pa rum pum pum pum. Shall I play for You. Pa rum pum pum pum. Mary nodded pa rum pum pum pum.  The ox and lamb kept time. Pa rum pum pum pum. I played my drum for Him. Pa rum pum pum pum.  I played my best for Him. Pa rum pum pum pum….Me and my drum...Rum pum pum pum.” 

 

Let me encourage you this year so many of us seem to be confounded by the sweeping changes coming across the face of the earth. Indeed, with St. Therese’s Vision for Disability Giftedness, the ministry the Lord has entrusted to me in my own poverty and with my own disabilities and gifts,  I honestly  don’t know where it is all going and to be honest I struggle with feeling loss as the society around me seems to descend into something that looks like a Marxist chaos.  However, Jesus wants me like St Therese to bring the poverty of my broken heart to Him and then leave the broken planet in His Hands, as well as the gifts He has given to me to be at His service, and so with this little review like the little drummer boy I play for Him. I don’t allow the growing darkness across the face of the earth as we lose our freedoms. With even our houses of worship being shut down, and everyone struggling with wondering if they will, myself included have a job. Will we have any freedom of movement as the worry of the growing number of covid 19 flus around us seems to spark mixed fears of getting the flu for some. For others, myself included in the latter especially, what will our over controlling governments have in store for us if we continue to give up our freedoms to worship, to have small businesses while big business thrives and people with disabilities and mental health challenges are at risk of being shoved under the carpet and not really factored into these decisions.

      No matter what the situation and how hopeless it may seem, we can lay our weary hearts before the Newborn King for our lives, death and eternity as we wander this barren land we are in His Hands. As we continue in the midst of this present  darkness in possibly apocalyptic times we can lift up our heads as Jesus says our redemption is at hand hoping for the day when the Lion will lay down with the Lamb.  Truly peace and justice will hold sway for in this land of dark and gloom, as truly the Light has shone into our hearts, the glory of an Only Begotten Son, full of grace and truth!!!