Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Yeah...Christmas

I'm conflicted/constrained/feeling obliqued. In military parlance ‘oblique’ means to move like a bishop on the chessboard. I’m hardly a bishop, but today I feel as if I’m not moving straight ahead, or to the side, but certainly not retreating. Obliqued.
I’m a Christian unimbued with the “Christmas spirit.” There-I said it.
I’m grateful to God every day that Jesus Christ humbled Himself to be born in Bethlehem.
Without Christ’s sacrifice-becoming flesh, living among us, dying for us and rising again-there would be no hope.
I have that Hope, and I am grateful.
But this is a cold Christmas for me, for a number of reasons, and I am looking forward to the new year.
Far beyond that but closer to my heart, I am looking for the return of our Lord to set right this world, which is spinning ever deeper into darkness. That Birth which is celebrated today/tomorrow could be said to be an earlier Advent-it is wonderful that Christ came to earth as a baby, but that is only part of the story. The next Advent, when Christ returns not as a baby but as Messiah, as King...that is what I want for Christmas.
At that, a cold Christmas is better than no Christmas. May God Bless you today.

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