Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

I’ve had a little trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year. I’m not sure what it is about this time of year that starts stressing me out and turns me into this strange hermit that would just rather close all the blinds and hide away. Maybe it’s all the commotion that accompanies this time of year. Or maybe, I’m just missing old friends and the family connections that made this time of year special to me. In fact it has worried me to the point where I wondered if I had lost the ability to find joy in the season at all.

Sunday morning the kids held their annual Christmas program at the church and as I’m asked to do from time to time I narrated the story while shepherds and angels and wise men all made the journey from parts far away to the little town of Bethlehem to see the cabbage patch Jesus lying in the manger. The kids were excellent in each of their roles, although the shepherds tended to look a little more like ninjas with their long sticks as they bounded down the isle at church, and I kept hoping that Max wouldn’t try taking Joseph out in some sort of strange Christmas story military take-over.

Then it hit me…It isn’t the spirit that was missing in me at all. It was the fact that I was blind, and have been blind to it working around me all the time. We go about our lives so quickly, usually with some sort of electronic device attached to our bodies that we loose track of ourselves. We get angry with work, with traffic, with bills, with our own demons that we loose sight of the fact that here, in a small barn in a very meager village we, you and I, were each given a gift. We were given a promise, and one that has yet to be unbroken.

No, we weren’t promised that life would be easy. We weren’t promised that we wouldn’t get our hearts broken. We weren’t even promised that we would understand all the things that happen around us. No…none of those things are given to us. Instead, in that silent still night, we were given the gift that we too often forget. For even in our darkest hours, when we can’t make sense of life, when the pain inside of us cries out against the darkness of night, you and I are never truly alone. God sent us that gift and as long as we remember that HE is with us, you and I should never be afraid of being forgotten.

I wish I could remember this more often in life, and that I could live each day being a little more understanding and kind. Maybe that’s the part of me that’s human after all. The part of me that struggles and fights and never quite understands, that wishes there were answers, that longs for another chance, and may never feel quite at peace seems to overtake me and yet all I have to do is stop: “be still”: and remember that wherever I am in life, I don’t make that walk alone.

Sure it took a couple of wise men and a wise woman in Burger King crowns bringing their gifts to remind me of that, but I’m glad they did. So on this holy week, when the gift of a child’s life was given to us, may I offer you each, peace, love and hope for a better year ahead.

See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.