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"The Day After" 12/26/04

It is the day after Christmas. We have made the journey to Christmas once more. Did it meet your expectations? Was it a quiet day for you or filled with lots of people - friends, family, family of choice? For many of us this was a first Christmas without a beloved family member. For others of us it was a time to be united with our children or the first Christmas with a new lover. I even know some people who were going shopping today. Are you glad it's over so life can get back to normal? Or do you like to hang on to the warm feelings of the season. Keep the lights and tree up a little longer and breath in the hope of this season. Some of us I bet took a nap today others of us watched the Steelers and still others of us went back to work. I'm one of those people who loves to hang onto Christmas for as long as possible. I want to hear the message that "a light shines in the darkness and nothing can put it out." I want to believe that people can love those in their family and our world even after the official holiday is over. I want to know that the peace that is proclaimed on Christmas cards can be found in our everyday lives. And as the writer of one of my favorite Christmas stories "The Polar Express", says I want to hear the bell ringing that says I still believe in miracles like the spirit of Santa Claus or a babe born in a manger.

So what do we do with this day after Christmas? How can we make a home for Christmas that lasts for more than a day?

1. We can celebrate that everyday is a gift from our loving Creator - the gift of life. In that day even when it's the day after Christmas life can be born. We can find new ways of living. We can look for the good in every situation. We can believe that Christ comes in our most ordinary of days with signs of new life. We can keep alive the spirit of Christmas by giving the gift of life to the people we meet everyday. We can send Christmas cards everyday by reaching out to those we love in our lives. The spirit of Christmas can be birthed as we take up healthy new habits and give up anything that would destroy God's life in us or others.

2. When Christmas lives in our hearts each day is open to infinite possibilities. No situation to terrible, no problem to big that with God being born in our midst we never face it alone. The lights of Christmas never go out for we have the promise that a light has come that the darkness cannot overcome. Even now we are already heading into more days of light than darkness. Put on a candle in your home, at your office desk, in the place in your life that symbolizes the light of God that always burns because God has come to dwell among us.

3. The message of Christmas can ring through the year. The message that love is alive. God's love for us lived out in us is something that may be reborn each Christmas, but must be brought to life each day. As we grow in God's love for us we reach out with that same love to challenge hatred and bigotry, to say that life not death has the final word. To say that with God we can make a difference. We can bring the message of peace on earth to all of the places that we go each day of the year. For indeed peace does begin in our hearts and then spreads to the far corners of our world offering the possibilities of new life. The message of Christmas is needed 24/7 if our world is to be made new.

On this December 26, 2004 as come to the end of another year take the opportunity this week to leave behind anything that keeps you from experiencing God's life each new day. Take the time this week to take an inventory and acknowledge any ways that you have made mistakes over this past year. Learn from them, and move on. It is not necessary and it is even harmful to take unnecessary guilt, shame, resentments, anger into a new beginning. As you reflect upon this past year celebrate the ways you have grown and changed. When things change, when growth happens new life is taking form, Christmas is happening.

May we be blessed with God's birth among us in the new year. I pray that all of us will be alive with God's presence as we live each day to the fullest. In the gift of each new day may we find God and birth God's realm into being.

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