Paul's Day

 Today is my eldest son’s birthday.  Paul was born in “Wild and Wonderful West Virginia.”  I was a junior in college and we were living in a 35 x 8-foot trailer on the college campus.  Paul’s first bedroom was a wardrobe closet in that trailer where the “porta-crib” just barely fit. 

“Swiftly flow the days…One season following another…”.   

Henri J.M. Nouwen wrote:  Birthdays need to be celebrated. I think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam, a promotion, or a victory. Because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone: “Thank you for being you.” Celebrating a birthday is exalting life and being glad for it. On a birthday we do not say: “Thanks for what you did, or said, or accomplished.” No, we say: “Thank you for being born and being among us.”

On birthdays we celebrate the present. We do not complain about what happened or speculate about what will happen, but we lift someone up and let everyone say: “We love you.”

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

 

January 4, 2024

Christmas is more than a day!  Christmas is a season—twelve days—not one!  Thus, my Christmas greeting cannot be considered late!  

I want to share what Christmas—at least the first eleven days of the season—had to say to me in my eightieth year of life.

I’ve come to know in a whole new way that Jesus is in both the light and the darkness.  The world, since that first Christmas, is a world walking in darkness and seeking the light.  Every Christmas we are reminded of how dark it is…and every Christmas we hear again the good news that the Light has come and “the darkness has not overcome it”!  

I’ve had a deep sense of Emmanuel (God is with us) this Christmas.  God has come to walk with us, to keep us company, to guide us along every road of our journey.  I sense this in a way never experienced before.

Every Christmas we are given the “renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him—whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend—be our companion (Henri Nouwen).”

Christmas is not just about a personal sojourn with Jesus.  Christmas is also about transforming the world with the power of love.  That is our task.

I hope your Christmas has been meaningful and life-giving.  The work of Christmas, as Howard Thurman reminds us, has just begun.