Bethlehem Bound ~ Christmas Eve Eve...

 

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

 

God-next-door is the holy invitation of life.  Jesus’s succinct summary of the gospel ~ ^“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”  Christmas helps open us to the holy part of humanity.  We sense connectedness and joyfulness, as well as the afterglow of laughter at parties.  And then just as the mystery of this moment slowly starts to make a difference, we blink, and suddenly the stores deeply discount the inflatable Santas…to make room for Valentine’s Day…Christmas vanishes around us and within us.  And yet, it doesn’t have to.  You have a choice to let the lingering truths of this season guide you and ground you in the New Year.  You can decide to stubbornly cling to hope as Jesus did.  You can practice peace by pausing between the stimulus (what someone says) and your response (what/how you say), because honestly, no one is keeping score of your snappy, sarcastic comebacks.  You can hold love as what has power, even when the external evidence objects as you read the paper or scroll online.  You can sing out joyfully, not because everything is perfect…but if we wait until the world reflects God’s realm…we might never find “reasons” to rejoice.  In fact, maybe singing, “Joy to the world” might just send a ripple into the universe.   So much of the Christmas story sounds foolish to modern-day cynics and critics…a baby born in a barn is God?  Shepherds as your PR team?  A young teenager as the womb God breaks forth?  While some may sarcastically laugh, my soul longs for the truth.  This, this is Christ my Lord, who reorders my life and reorients my soul to be about living love for God, the other, and myself as the way of faith and full life.  May it be so for you today as you stroll around your neighborhood gazing at Christmas lights and wonder as you wander how God’s love is here and now.  Amen.