A Word from Wendy – New Year
Mary committed these things to memory and considered them carefully. The shepherds returned home, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.– Luke 2:19-20
“Happy [almost] New Year!” Or is it? I’ll admit, I get a tinge of the winter blues when Advent becomes Christmas and then Christmas is … over.
Boxing up Christmas and putting it away is its own kind of chore – finding a place to store everything and making sure everything is back in place. All so that life can go back to normal and begin the countdown to next Christmas. It takes more than a minute to get used to a house that’s no longer clad in the trappings of the season, a sanctuary back to its basic beauty.
But is Christmas really over?
Christmas wasn’t over for Mary after the shepherds went home. Christmas wasn’t over for the shepherds, who had a new song to sing and a story to tell. Christmas wasn’t over for the magi, as they went home by another road having found and worshipped the newborn King.
God’s unfolding story of Christmas – the coming of Emmanuel, God-with-us – was just beginning. God’s unfolding Christmas story is not over; it still goes on.
In the collection of writings “Kneeling in Bethlehem,” Ann Weems offers:
It Is Not Over
It is not over,
this birthing.
There are always newer
skies into which
God can throw stars.
When we begin to think
that we can predict the Advent of God,
that we can box the Christ
in a stable in Bethlehem,
that’s just the time
that God will be born
in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe.
Those who wait for God
watch with their hearts and not their eyes,
listening,
always listening
for angel words.
Merry Christmas, friends! May this new (calendar) year find us as a people watching and listening with our hearts for angel words, a people singing a new song and telling a new story, a people changed as we worship the newborn King. I can’t wait to see where God will be born in the coming year!
Grace and peace,
Pastor Wendy