Merry Christmas! As we celebrate the amazing miracle of Christmas and the birth of the Savior, I am reminded that although we’ve done the obligatory shopping, cooking and events that there is more, so much more to the Christmas holiday than what has become our pattern. Much like the time of Jesus’ birth, the world and the people surrounding His holiday where not in a great state. The Christmas Carol writer penned it well when they said “the WEARY WORLD rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.” The world, even before social media had become weary. The taxes were too high, there were murders, issues among public safety and citizens, income inequality, disease, racism, classism, homophobism, food deserts, homelessness, sexism and so many more ills in society that bring us to a state of exhaustion. The people of that time, like the people of this time…are weary.
AND, even at the end of the year when we feel that weight of fatigue; we can still rejoice in our weariness. There is a “thrill of hope!” The one thing that I’ve experienced that has the capacity to shift our weariness to hope is love. Love is the force strong enough to overcome sadness and loneliness and weariness. And the beautiful thing about love is just like on that beautiful Bethlehem morning, love can come to us in some of the most unusual places if we will simply have the courage to seek it. Jesus came into a world that had lost hope in a better day, came to parents who had lost hope in their circumstance. Love came to a nation who had lost itself. Love came and yet there was seemingly no room for love. Yet when Love got here, things changed. From that time to this, Love has been moving hearts and minds from weary to joy. It is my hope that this holiday season this weary world will rejoice in the truth that love is here and that it can find us even when we can’t find ourselves. May your world rejoice in the Savior’s birth and in the presence of love even if it looks like it’s sitting in a manger in the back of the barn.
Merry Christmas. Love to you.
T2