Dear Trekker,
Amidst the joy of another Christmas season (God’s mass for Christ which we may celebrate annually), I have a heavy duty confession to make. I wonder not so much where our country is headed. That has been suggested sometime ago. But I wonder where “normal thinking people” are these days in failing to understand the significance of Christmas. Are some of us being duped, trekker? I hope not.
But let me explain. Two items: I am appalled that our President has decided to remove from the White House this year any semblance of Christmas being a religious holiday. “It is the “people’s house, so we’ll take no religious stance” he allegedly said. I thought… this is the “change we need”; we’ll rewrite history? Then I mused how preposterous it would be if next year somebody wanted to say the 4 th of July was not a political celebration. Go figure!
Second item: A particular military service organization of which I am a member says on the front cover of its magazine this month, “for God and country since 1919”. Not bad! Worthy declaration! But in the magazine it says: “Christmas is a holiday during which neither the past nor the future is of as much interest as the present.” Duh… Christmas as a holiday has ALL it’s meaning because of history, when “God came near”, and will have equal interest throughout the history of the world. This IS the visited planet! Can’t people connect the dots?
Trekker, I’m probably like you… not the smartest guy on the planet, but probably not the dumbest either. Let’s connect these dots and not be stupid. Christmas is a religious holiday… it is Jesus’ birth… first and foremost… period. We have a future and a hope because God left his home and came to earth for me and you and all peoples!! All this talk about disjoining Christ and Christmas! It is ridiculous. I call it the “decapitation of Christmas”.
To keep my focus, this Christmas I am meditating on a statement John the Apostle makes early in his Gospel, John 1:12: “to all who received him, to those who believed in His name, he gave the right to become children of God”. I pondered… one doesn’t “get it” about Christmas because we are too adult, too grownup, too educated! Will it ever stop? We must become a trusting child if we are to understand Christmas! There is hope for the world, but THE gift has been given, 2000 years ago. God is the giver, we are the receivers, if we choose to believe! Christmas is not about presents… it is about hope for tomorrow because “unto you is born today a Savior which is Christ the Lord”. The angels got it right, the shepherds heard it, chose to believe and acted upon it!
But a little digression I want to take… I heard the other day from one of my sisters, Bonnie. Now 84, she writes, “I remember the (great) depression quite well. I remember how little everyone had. But Daddy always had a job, never was out of work during that terrible time and we were so blessed for that reason. It was prior to Fran’s birth (my closest sister), so I was about five years old. It was Christmas and downtown Marion (IN) had put up colored lights for Christmas to give everyone some hope. The lights were strung along Washington Street (the main street of my hometown) and around the courthouse… just one line of colored lights along each side. But what it did for everyone was monumental, because it gave everyone some hope that the worst was past. They were on the light posts about twelve feet off the ground and made a glow on everything that was so dirty and smudged and dark. We couldn’t afford to ride the street car into downtown, but we all walked to see them the first night.” She added, “We did have six colored lights on our Christmas tree, I remember that. How lovely everything looked! We stood on the curb watching, and everyone was in awe. I remember standing in front of Mother and I looked up to see if she thought they were pretty too and she was crying. She was seeing the end of that long hard time. We were happy kids, just poor like everyone else, but we all knew people who were worse off than we were. Mother managed to be cheerful and happy and sing to us and told us stories.”
I recount this trekker, because Christmas is that hope for a bright tomorrow. That is the promise of John 1:12… believe and receive the gift. Thank goodness children find belief easy. Children know Christmas is all about receiving. And children know there is a “future out there”, even more so when Mom or Dad shed a tear. Yes, despite the disappointment of yesterday, Christmas is all about a future and a hope… if we believe! As I write this month, another pop icon has returned to mere mortal status. But for him and all of us, there is hope and forgiveness… but not apart from receiving Christ. We can become the richest athlete in the world, but reaching it means nothing without Christ. Our house is built on sand if Christ is not the foundation. A “rich” life without Christ at the center is destined to implode, for anybody.
Children are not only trusting, they are so innocent. But for adults it is hard “to start all over” and wipe the slate clean. But the message of Christmas is we can become children again! This is the miracle of Christmas. We’ve just got to believe it. But it only happens if we are born anew… we must be born, as John 1:13 says, “not by blood or the will of the flesh, or the will of man, but by God.”
One of my favorite contemporary writers, clergyman Craig Barnes, says it well, “You see, the miracle of Christmas is not that our old mistakes are wiped away so we can start over. Thank God we don’t have to start over. We would just make the same mistakes again. No, the miracle of Christmas is that “in receiving a Savior you are changed!” May I insert… THIS is the “change we need in 2009”.
God bless you, trekker. Merry Christmas! Let’s become a child again this Christmas. As we reflect on childhood memories and our hearts grow tender, we just may capture the Christmas spirit anew! For Christmas is all about Jesus Christ… and that piece of history is etched in time and eternity… whether one believes it or not!
Joyfully adoring the Christ child,
Trekker Jim Meredith
At last, someone comes up with the “right” awnesr!
In the complicated world we live in, it’s good to find simlpe solutions.