Blog
Christmas has come and gone. How was yours?
03
Dec
Dec
| I have an earworm today. The lyric for David Haas’ “Star-Child” is playing over and over in my head. “This year, this year let the day arrive when Christmas comes for everyone, everyone alive.” What a wonderful and holy wish for us as Christians! Still it is a fact of God’s grace that the majority of people in our world are not Christian and may neither understand nor welcome the coming of a holiday known by the name “Christmas.” So the lyric is a tad, as we say, politically incorrect. What a sad state of affairs: to be wishing light and love and joy to someone, to anyone, and to feel that the very words you use in the wishing are causing exactly the opposite of what you intend. The words we use as a blessing can be misunderstood by the people we wish to bless.
Perhaps we all need to go far beyond words and get to the heart of the matter: what we all long for is a world of safety, of peace, of sufficiency, of comfort and belonging, laughter and trust and love. For many of us the word “Christmas” contains all that, for others not so much, but it isn’t the word, it’s the desire, the longing, the wish. So any way that I can help another realize this hope, let me do it! Perhaps in prayers of love or deeds of service; ways that spread the message of Christ, the Love of God, without using words that might by their very nature cause the opposite of what the angels sang and what we long for. Actions speak louder than words, anyway. Let our very living be a sign of what we wish.
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