The Holiday season is washing over everyone I know with tsunami-like vengeance, and in the midst of the most unsettled days of my brief life since the days of Cuban Missile Crisis, it is hard to get one's bearings, let alone maintain them.
Recent events in our extended family have intersected our plans and created new ones. I won't have enough time to even post at my usually infrequent "whenever I get around to it" rate. Thankfully, according to my Sat Counter widget, I am remaining fairly true to my mission and tagline (writing for an audience of one, reaching even fewer) so I am confident that I am not disappointing a large number of my fellow pilgrims. Still, I know there are a few of you out there so this message is for you.
This season is supposedly tied in some comically and warped human way to one of the greatest events in human history and the "greatest story ever told". Sadly, but not surprisingly, we have warped and marred the meaning of this event almost beyond recognition. Almost.
We are in the season of Advent right now as recognized by followers of Christ since around the 5th or 6th century, perhaps as a balance to the growing observance of Christmas - which was a converted pagan festival - that also began around those times. Regardless of either celebration's genesis, we have what we have today, but we also have choice too.
I hope you will choose to slow down and take time to cultivate holy anticipation this Advent season - anticipation being a lost and even scorned practice in our culture of instant gratification. I even saw an ad recently for a product that purports to help make the sex act happen faster, for those who don't have time to savor the moment, I guess. Things really are getting weird out there. Anyway, I will pray that you can wait in anticipation for what God is and will be doing. And then, may you enter Christmastide (all 12 days of it) with joy, vigor and wonder. Again, having a 12-day feast to celebrate requires a bit of pacing and self-control as opposed to a one-day, all-out, over-indulgent, food-and-football-fueled Bacchanalia. Besides, what good is a celebration that you have to recover from? You'd have to recover from hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, and that would be cheaper than the usual Christmas blowout we usually get sucked into.
Now before you think we're not going to give and receive presents this year, or eat, or celebrate - let me say that I suspect that our events will look much like they do every year, but we are working to change the spirit and intention of these proceedings an ways that we pray will flow out into new appreciations and possibilities in our lives. Here's one example:
Being nearly 50 means that there really isn't anything much out there I need anymore (except increasingly excellent health care coverage). So two years ago my family bought some gifts for me from World Vision. And they did again last year. I don't know if they will again this year, but we have already agreed to use half of the "love gift" we get from the church I serve to buy what we can from World Vision. We have been gifted for years. Time to give back. Gift-giving is a GOOD part of this season if we work to keep God's perspective in view.
We will be spending some time with distant family and for reasons one might not think are worthy of celebrating, but we are committed to celebrating with them while we are together. Often at this time of year circumstances conflict with peoples Dickensian fantasies of what should be happening, but we are praying we will be able to truly "give thanks in all circumstances". God doesn't stop being gracious and abounding in love just because human sin and its consequences intersect our plans.
We are going to celebrate Christmastide. I'm not just certain how, but we will and we will include as many others as we can. Why not stretch the season, even in little ways? As many have observed, "it's a shame we act like this only one day a year".
To you few who read these ramblings from time to time, I send our heartfelt greetings of love, peace and joy in the name of Christ Jesus. Whether or not our beliefs agree, we cannot deny that we stand on the same earth and walk under the same sky and share the same ultimate human fate. You are our brothers and sisters and we pray for you, even if we don't know you well.
May the Lord Bless you and Keep you.
May He make His Face shine upon you.
May He lift up His Countenance upon you
and give you His Everlasting Peace.
Shalom
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