December 2024

As we enter the holy season of Advent, it is a time of joy, a time of waiting expectantly for the coming of the Promised One of God. Scripture foretold that coming, like our own news outlets and politicians foretell the image they hope we will identify with and join them. And like the people who heard those prophets centuries ago, we read our own hopes and dreams into the foretold coming of the Promised One of God.

But I urge you to avoid those incorrect perceptions of the coming of Jesus. Read instead that God’s grace has come to us in one as vulnerable and helpless as a human infant, one whose parentage left questions God chose of provide answers through a mother who accepted the role of bearing the Promised One, and a man who would stand willingly in the stead of a human father, who together taught him to know the proper view of God, of others, of godly behavior and godly love, of strength in the face of difficult things and times.

Yet it is so very important that while we know the end of the story of that Promised One on the human level, we hold it in the background to remember the beginning of the story that brought God’s love and grace to us in human form. Kneel with the shepherds and those who heard their story and followed, with the Magi, the foreign spiritual leaders, who came to visit the promised ruler, bearing gifts that were precious and mind-boggling to the common working-class parents of the infant Jesus of Nazareth.

Merry Christmas to all, peace and goodwill to all, grace and love to all!

And to all, good holy days!!