The Long Quiet: Day 23

 

 We turn to Christmas as a Mecca at the end of the year, a place to pilgrimage to year after year.  "Remember the reason for the season," we say yet we fret and worry over what to give, wearily sigh over the tasks associated with the holiday and come to the end of it all, collapsing with tiredness, pack away all the ornaments and decorations and say how glad we are that it's over and done another year.  

And then we repeat it all over again.  Year after year. Always hopeful.   Always disappointed, that we seemed to have missed something vital, that we grasped it for a moment and then lost it before we were even aware that we had glimpsed it.  

We repeat this process every single year. 

We're disappointed each year because we tracked the days leading up to his birth, and we think the story stopped there at the end of the season. But it didn't.  The birth of the baby Jesus was only the beginning of a beautiful plan of salvation that was meant for all mankind.  It hasn't stopped.  It's gone on and on.

This year let's look at the gift, at all the gifts within the gift, as it was, as it is, as it shall always be.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believe in him shall not perish but shall have eternal life.

Remember that the story doesn't end here.  It goes on...