It is Christmas Eve day and so we enter the year’s parenthesis - that interlude when we break from routine and focus on home, family and how wonderful life is. It’s a time we want everything to be perfect - the food, the ambience, the relationships. And yet even in my small world the imperfections threaten to overwhelm.
One set of friends who have for weeks planned their Christmas family reunion, have now seen their plans changed by the death of their son-in-law’s grandad. Instead of spending Christmas with them, their daughter and her husband will be trekking halfway across Canada to attend the funeral. Another set of friends have requested prayer for a neighbor who is dying of cancer, and who has asked them to help him plan his funeral. A third friend is contemplating resigning from his job after weeks of personal turmoil. The husband of another on-line acquaintance had heart surgery yesterday. The list goes on and on.
My friend Charlie ended his poem "Christmas" with the words:
Star-maker long ago agreed
tonight He sends His Son
tonight all ordinary life is done.
Part of me rises up in a grand "Yes!" to these words. But part of me, in the face of all that is wrong, twisted and hurtful asks, how did that night change anything at all?
Then I remind myself - that night was only the beginning of the last act. The play is not over. My response in every scene affirms the ending I know by faith:
Your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6:10 (NIV)
2 comments:
Hi Violet! I came from Dy's blog laughing about your Santa story on the ferry!
Your words ring true, well, God's word. Thanks for the reminder. It will be done.
Hugs,
Jess
Jess, thanks for dropping by! (You home-school moms with your burgeoning families are such an inspiration!)
And, yes, we "know" it don't we, by faith, rock-solid, deep inside - that God's rightness will some day reveal and set straight all that is now veiled and askew.
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