Christmas Dad, Dad Jokes, and Shepherd Dad

Christmas season is upon us!  With it comes holiday parties, tacky sweaters, white elephants, chestnut roasting, cancelled classes, final exams, shouts of “you’ll shoot your eye out,” long drives to see distant family, and Jello molds.  It’s a time that massive families draw together and dinner tables all but collapse under the weight of side dishes and casseroles. Even in the ministry world, December a full month, as the season marks a time to reflect on the year and celebrate the year’s end. It’s during this noisy, busy time of the year, with jingle bells ringing in my ears, that the still, small voice of our infant Messiah whispers to be heard.  I’m grateful that every so often something forces me to stop and listen.

This year will be my third Christmas season as a dad – which further solidifies that I’m no longer the Hamburger-Helper-eating-and-barely-bathing-weekly bachelor Noetzel I was in college and am instead thoroughly a dad.  The Christmas story is a story of a dad far superior to me loving a son far more perfect than mine revealing a plan I could never make to people who don’t understand what He’s up to.  Perhaps as a dad, I should engage the story of a loving Father and his begotten Son – but the characters often feel lofty, and God’s model of Fatherhood humbles my own experience of it.  I have trouble engaging it, because I’m not the hero.  Enter Slugs & Bugs!

Dewey, my little man, loves Slugs & Bugs, Randall Goodgame and Andrew Peterson’s music group out of Nashville.  They write silly, fun, thought-provoking children’s music.  They’ve also happened to write one of my favorite Christmas songs – one that I can relate to.

Shepherd Dad tells of a dad and son who are visited by the angel Gabriel on that hillside outside of Bethlehem.  He tells them to “go and see the king,” and the dad leaves the son in charge of the flock while he goes to the inn to inn-spect (dad joke…) what the angel has told him about.  The song always moves me at this part:

The shepherds found the stable there

in quiet Bethlehem.

But one look in the manger,

and one shepherd turned and ran.

The shepherd dad ran through the streets

back to the fields where tending sheep

he found his shepherd son

he found his shepherd son

and leaping like a mountain cat

he scooped his son up on his back

and said “Hold on tight!

Our savior is born tonight!”

It moves me because it’s a father flinging duty to the wind and running with abandon to draw his son into the majesty of God’s great revelation in Jesus Christ.  It moves me because it’s a father drawing his son into a grand adventure.  It moves me because it’s a dad showing his son how little self matters and how much Christ matters.  This is the kind of dad I aspire to be.

May you be swept off your feet and rushed to the savior’s side this holiday season.

-Matt Noetzell