Monday, January 2, 2012
269 - Daily Renewal Beats Seasonal Storage
Spirituality Column #269
January 3, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)
Daily Renewal Beats Seasonal Storage
By Bob Walters
As most of us have put away our Christmas lights, decorations, knick-knacks and Mannheim-Steamroller CDs until next year, let’s not go through 2012 with Baby Jesus in a box in storage.
It is far better to remember, appreciate and reverence the idea that our everyday and eternal life in Christ is far different from – and better than – the practical, decorated, and empirical application of the limited season of Christmas.
Here is something to think about:
Christmas is largely a holiday of tradition, while Jesus Christ is entirely a messenger of hope. Tradition implies the past, and hope implies the future.
So … if Christ is about the future, why is Christmas about the past?
This simple juxtaposition of timeline I think helps explain the western world’s very fun but generally out-of-whack cultural experience of tradition-laden and commerce-fueled Christmas celebrations which fly straight-up in the face of why God sent the Christ as the divine/human baby Jesus.
I am no Grinch, but I suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite. Anyone who knows me well knows I get very attached to things and traditions. I not only enjoy but annually cling to lifelong Christmas traditions. Christmas becomes “real” to me when the home decorations go up, when I hear Christ-honoring Christmas carols (“Hark the Herald” not “Santa Baby”), read Luke 2:1-14 at Christmas Eve dinner (although I forgot this year), and listen to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.
Our system-wide culture of Christmas celebrations tends to mark emotions of the past more than hope in the future. And as a further bit of irony, it’s New Year’s that actually gets the message of hope right: “Everybody gets a second chance” is the succinct New Year’s Eve lesson from that movie of venerable wisdom, “Forrest Gump.”
But that isn’t the message of New Year’s Eve; that’s the message of Christ. “Everybody gets a second chance” – and a third, fourth and fifth and as many as we need – to get to the place where we accept in faith and understand in our hearts and minds that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that we can and must trust him as our Lord and Savior.
As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “inwardly we are renewed day by day.” Accepting that daily gift from Christ is better than clinging to our seasonal traditions.
Don’t store Jesus in a box. Christ is about the daily renewal of divine hope. Nothing can make a New Year any happier than that.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) posts these weekly columns at www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com. Feel free to forward them to someone who cares … or more importantly, someone who doesn’t.
January 3, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)
Daily Renewal Beats Seasonal Storage
By Bob Walters
As most of us have put away our Christmas lights, decorations, knick-knacks and Mannheim-Steamroller CDs until next year, let’s not go through 2012 with Baby Jesus in a box in storage.
It is far better to remember, appreciate and reverence the idea that our everyday and eternal life in Christ is far different from – and better than – the practical, decorated, and empirical application of the limited season of Christmas.
Here is something to think about:
Christmas is largely a holiday of tradition, while Jesus Christ is entirely a messenger of hope. Tradition implies the past, and hope implies the future.
So … if Christ is about the future, why is Christmas about the past?
This simple juxtaposition of timeline I think helps explain the western world’s very fun but generally out-of-whack cultural experience of tradition-laden and commerce-fueled Christmas celebrations which fly straight-up in the face of why God sent the Christ as the divine/human baby Jesus.
I am no Grinch, but I suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite. Anyone who knows me well knows I get very attached to things and traditions. I not only enjoy but annually cling to lifelong Christmas traditions. Christmas becomes “real” to me when the home decorations go up, when I hear Christ-honoring Christmas carols (“Hark the Herald” not “Santa Baby”), read Luke 2:1-14 at Christmas Eve dinner (although I forgot this year), and listen to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.
Our system-wide culture of Christmas celebrations tends to mark emotions of the past more than hope in the future. And as a further bit of irony, it’s New Year’s that actually gets the message of hope right: “Everybody gets a second chance” is the succinct New Year’s Eve lesson from that movie of venerable wisdom, “Forrest Gump.”
But that isn’t the message of New Year’s Eve; that’s the message of Christ. “Everybody gets a second chance” – and a third, fourth and fifth and as many as we need – to get to the place where we accept in faith and understand in our hearts and minds that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that we can and must trust him as our Lord and Savior.
As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “inwardly we are renewed day by day.” Accepting that daily gift from Christ is better than clinging to our seasonal traditions.
Don’t store Jesus in a box. Christ is about the daily renewal of divine hope. Nothing can make a New Year any happier than that.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) posts these weekly columns at www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com. Feel free to forward them to someone who cares … or more importantly, someone who doesn’t.
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