Season's Greetings!
Season's Greetings! - © Kent Fletcher
December 22, 2006
As this year rolls ever on toward an end, with a new year to follow, with new dreams, with new accomplishments, with new outlooks to be had, let us not forget the reason for the season. While I have my own thoughts about Christmas, let me share one other with you, from people who are far beyond my talent of making sense of a yearly celebration of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
*****
There is a wonderful line from the American scholar Stephen L. Carter that is worth pondering this Christmas season: "Religion is, at its heart, a way of denying the rest of the world." He is astutely and gloriously correct.
Faith's view of this world is strangely skeptical. No, more than that. It is a posture of unequivocal distrust leading to rejection! When the world recites its mantras — you matter only if you are beautiful, the most important thing is money, winning is everything, Look Out for Number One — faith protests them all. It adopts a posture of doubt and incredulity. It rejects them.
I refuse to believe that selfishness is acceptable or that it is permissible to resent another's good fortune. I will not swallow the world's way of thinking in order to justify prejudice, aggression, and hatred. No believer can be anything but incredulous about this world's claim that he/she is entitled to anything he/she can get his/her hands on or that he/she should not feel guilty about exploiting and using people.
So distrust the alleged certainties of sense that cancel the mysteries of faith. Fight the tendency of the masses to look forward only for the sake of declaring the impossibility of living with hope. Deny the inevitability of such greed, hatred, and violence in the world that we cannot prove the reality of love.
The Bible warns against being blinded by this world and speaks of the danger of the blind leading the blind. That warning puts us on notice that things, people, and ways of thinking totally rooted in the finite world of time, space, and matter will keep us from discovering, experiencing, and delighting in the greater realities of God, spirit, and eternity that can only be known by faith.
Faith isn't self-talk or self-deception. It is neither wish projection nor wishful thinking. It is our willingness to hear and stand with the things God has shown us through events and people as awe-inspiring as a trembling, smoking mountain in the desert and as modest as a baby's first cry in the village of Bethlehem.
So let Christmas deny the hold of this world on your heart. Let it open your eyes to what the willfully blind will never see, your ears to things the incorrigibly deaf can never hear. See Immanuel — and know God is with us. Hear the song of angels — and receive God's peace offered to anxious hearts. Hold the confusion, cynicism, and antagonisms of this troubled world suspect — and choose God's rule as your way of affirming the true realities.
*****
In this past year, my family has lost a couple of family members, and I cannot speak for them, but I miss my first cousin and my aunt dearly. I think about them nearly every day, and my heart aches. And, yet, I do know they are both in much better form than we are here, and I do know I will see them again, some day.
You all should know pretty well my feelings toward my animals. I lost my next best friend, Felix, just a couple of months ago. I know where he is, too, playing in that meadow over the Rainbow Bridge with his two playmates, Zeke and Hercules, being fit and trim, with no bodily aches or pains, waiting for ever how long it takes for me to get there, too.
I also fear my Lil Darlin' won't be long for this world, as she has renal disease. But I do call her my "Wonder Dog", as in it's a wonder she is still kicking. Her face has turned gray in the last few months, and her gait has diminished, but she keeps bounding back with renewed energy that amazes the vets as well. I hope the Good Lord will take her peacefully, should He beat me to the vet.
The time each year beginning with Thanksgiving through the New Year has been a pretty solemn time for me, for the last 41 years. It all started, the solemnity, with my father's death just before Thanksgiving, 1965. As I just wrote, it's solemn, not necessarily sad, giving me a brief respite from the hectic other days of the year, to reflect on my own morbidity to come, and my own brief future on this planet.
Well, I guess the plagiarism from an acquaintance and my own brief thoughts pretty much wraps up this short spiel. I want to wish each and everyone who reads this a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year.
May the Lord bless you and keep you, may His face shine upon you, and give you peace. Amen!
December 22, 2006
As this year rolls ever on toward an end, with a new year to follow, with new dreams, with new accomplishments, with new outlooks to be had, let us not forget the reason for the season. While I have my own thoughts about Christmas, let me share one other with you, from people who are far beyond my talent of making sense of a yearly celebration of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
*****
There is a wonderful line from the American scholar Stephen L. Carter that is worth pondering this Christmas season: "Religion is, at its heart, a way of denying the rest of the world." He is astutely and gloriously correct.
Faith's view of this world is strangely skeptical. No, more than that. It is a posture of unequivocal distrust leading to rejection! When the world recites its mantras — you matter only if you are beautiful, the most important thing is money, winning is everything, Look Out for Number One — faith protests them all. It adopts a posture of doubt and incredulity. It rejects them.
I refuse to believe that selfishness is acceptable or that it is permissible to resent another's good fortune. I will not swallow the world's way of thinking in order to justify prejudice, aggression, and hatred. No believer can be anything but incredulous about this world's claim that he/she is entitled to anything he/she can get his/her hands on or that he/she should not feel guilty about exploiting and using people.
So distrust the alleged certainties of sense that cancel the mysteries of faith. Fight the tendency of the masses to look forward only for the sake of declaring the impossibility of living with hope. Deny the inevitability of such greed, hatred, and violence in the world that we cannot prove the reality of love.
The Bible warns against being blinded by this world and speaks of the danger of the blind leading the blind. That warning puts us on notice that things, people, and ways of thinking totally rooted in the finite world of time, space, and matter will keep us from discovering, experiencing, and delighting in the greater realities of God, spirit, and eternity that can only be known by faith.
Faith isn't self-talk or self-deception. It is neither wish projection nor wishful thinking. It is our willingness to hear and stand with the things God has shown us through events and people as awe-inspiring as a trembling, smoking mountain in the desert and as modest as a baby's first cry in the village of Bethlehem.
So let Christmas deny the hold of this world on your heart. Let it open your eyes to what the willfully blind will never see, your ears to things the incorrigibly deaf can never hear. See Immanuel — and know God is with us. Hear the song of angels — and receive God's peace offered to anxious hearts. Hold the confusion, cynicism, and antagonisms of this troubled world suspect — and choose God's rule as your way of affirming the true realities.
*****
In this past year, my family has lost a couple of family members, and I cannot speak for them, but I miss my first cousin and my aunt dearly. I think about them nearly every day, and my heart aches. And, yet, I do know they are both in much better form than we are here, and I do know I will see them again, some day.
You all should know pretty well my feelings toward my animals. I lost my next best friend, Felix, just a couple of months ago. I know where he is, too, playing in that meadow over the Rainbow Bridge with his two playmates, Zeke and Hercules, being fit and trim, with no bodily aches or pains, waiting for ever how long it takes for me to get there, too.
I also fear my Lil Darlin' won't be long for this world, as she has renal disease. But I do call her my "Wonder Dog", as in it's a wonder she is still kicking. Her face has turned gray in the last few months, and her gait has diminished, but she keeps bounding back with renewed energy that amazes the vets as well. I hope the Good Lord will take her peacefully, should He beat me to the vet.
The time each year beginning with Thanksgiving through the New Year has been a pretty solemn time for me, for the last 41 years. It all started, the solemnity, with my father's death just before Thanksgiving, 1965. As I just wrote, it's solemn, not necessarily sad, giving me a brief respite from the hectic other days of the year, to reflect on my own morbidity to come, and my own brief future on this planet.
Well, I guess the plagiarism from an acquaintance and my own brief thoughts pretty much wraps up this short spiel. I want to wish each and everyone who reads this a very Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year.
May the Lord bless you and keep you, may His face shine upon you, and give you peace. Amen!
posted by Fletch @ 7:48 PM
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