Christmas reflections of a sixty-one-year-old guy in central Michigan

Here's what I've observed and experienced from this year's Christmas:

• Where was Jesus?  You had to look for him this year, regardless of where you were.  He wasn't on the Christmas cards, at least not many of them.  He wasn't in the media.  He wasn't in the town square.  Oops, we don't have one.  He wasn't at the malls.  I didn't hear him mentioned in many conversations, including mine.  I may have wished somebody a "Merry Christmas" once or twice.

• Jesus sighting at Our Savior--Our church has a day school which puts on a Christmas program every year.  I wonder if the kids reciting their parts and singing the Christmas Carols knew the full importance of what they were doing.  School students, from pre-schoolers to eighth grade, gave a strong witness to the birth of Jesus more than two thousand years ago.

• Family time was a real blessing--Our son and daughter came home to celebrate Christmas.  Whenever I need a reminder of the reality and the presence of God, I look at them.  Then having my wife as a major piece of the equation just seals the fact that I'm blessed.  But, the glue that holds it all together is the knowledge that Jesus Christ is real.  Our identity and our purpose is found in him. 
  

• Christmas prep should start in June--I think I have a heart problem.  I know I have a heart  problem.  If I don't prepare my heart ahead of time, Christmas Carols for me can sound like finger nails scratching on a chalkboard.  I can let the past intrude on the present.  As a child, Christmas was usually a hard time.  But, I'm no longer a child.  Maybe, I need to charge up my Christmas music on iTunes during the summer.

• Getting closer to seeing Jesus in real time--It's intimidating to know that I have more life behind me, then I have ahead of me.  But, I believe that this life is just practice for what is to come. I can't begin to comprehend what heaven will be like.  There is an endgame and that's what I'm aiming for.

• For Christmas 2008--the preparation needs to start right now to celebrate the reality that God came to earth as a sign of the hope that awaits all of us.  It's in that reality where I and everybody else will find the real purpose for living.  God, "I really want to feel your hope at all times and I want to spend the rest of my life sharing it."
  

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Tags: Christmas, baby-boomers, Michigan, Christmas carols, hope, Jesus, God