Food for Thought💡: December 16, 2022
Christmas in two movements: A gentle reminder I needed. Maybe you do too?
They say writers write what they need to read. I think it’s true.
The busy December season finds our tiny home a bit out of sorts. Gus went on vacation around the time I wrapped up a long semester and started a new job. It’s a little bipolar around here! While he sleeps in, is getting much-needed rest, and a well-deserved break; I’m needing to keep a working schedule, complete with zoom call meetings and projects.
So I’ve needed life-giving truths that comfort me as I navigate gratitude with the (expected) demands of the new responsibilities and corresponding learning curve that come with a new job. Because of that learning curve, I chose to share with you words I wrote a few years back rather than try to write new ones.
I'm grateful the truth does not expire. I needed the simple reminders I wrote to you back in 2020. If you were not a subscriber then, you’ll read them afresh. If you read them back then, I pray they will be a comforting reminder to you as they were to me.
Either way, I pray they’ll be timely in the thick of your busy Christmas season. I miss you. See you hopefully next week.
Love,
Paola
Ps: Just to illustrate how all over the place we’ve been, the first photo is how our tee looked for more than two weeks-just lights. Because we were too tired to get the box of ornaments, unpack them, and decorate Jarvis. (Yes, we name our tree. You can laugh at or with us😅). The second photo is how our tree looks as of earlier this week.
Christmas comes to us in a two-part movement.
We commemorate, and we anticipate.
We Commemorate
Every December the Western world engages in a series of rituals. In many homes, there is a tree set up with ornaments. There may be a mantel decorated above the chimney in the homes that have one. Wreaths hang on different doors in our neighbourhood.
With all these objects and traditions, the heart is reaching for an intangible joy that is hard to put into words and yet so easy to grasp with our emotions.
The nativity scene is brought from the attic or basement, unpacked and set up with the familiar characters. Figurines of Mary, Joseph, the three wise men, and baby Jesus all arranged to frame the most significant event in human history: when God chose to enter humanity and dwell among us as one of us. It’s what all mythology points to. From the Greeks to the Aztecs, all the way to Thor from the Avengers, it’s the story all myths want to be.
From tradition to history, we hunger after wonder. We long for God. We want to be near him. It’s part of emotional and spiritual DNA.
We rehearse our faith’s reason for being. We celebrate what took place in that stable- the birth of a Heavenly King, who was pleased to live in our midst. But, why?
Reason to Celebrate
Simply put: the reason we have Christmas is that God answered our failure with hope. The scene takes place long before Mary and Joseph. It goes back to the first book of the Bible.
The familiar story from Catechism or Sunday school about a tree and a forbidden fruit, in fact, reveals an even more familiar pattern of the human heart. “Did God really say..?” asks the serpent. Enticed by the question Eve ignores the boundaries God set for them.
Although the scene carried disastrous consequences, it’s easy to miss the prequel to Christmas happening in the middle of that awful scene.
“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” Genesis 3:15 (CSB)
The Hebrew word for offspring is seed. God promised that from Eve’s line --that is another human, would defeat the enemy. We find echoes of this promise throughout the Bible.
Condemned to live in a fallen world with fallen hearts pulling away from God, that’s the consequence. God himself promises to bridge the chasm and bring us to himself once more.
Let that sink in. Humanity’s first (and most devastating) act of rebellion is met with promised hope. Our beloved Christmas story, Advent, finds its root in a moment of human failure of catastrophic proportions.
We Anticipate
We live in the anticipation of what our future holds because of what has already happened. It’s a future not yet realized, but which has already begun! This means that in all circumstances, no matter the outcome, there is a bigger picture taking place right along the one unfolding before our eyes.
Amidst the noisy world competing for our attention, money, and time, we commemorate what took place millennia ago. Nothing can alter what happened in Bethlehem that day, and what happened on a roman cross thirty-three years later. Most of all what took place three days after, when a tomb was found empty. That’s the meaning of Christmas. That’s Easter morning.
It makes all our days, the ones we'll soon leave behind at the closing of this year, and the ones ahead, pregnant with meaning. Many things happened this year. And Advent is one of them. That’s hope that holds you and me, and all things, together.
[Adapted from a post originally sent on December 2, 2020].
Wonderful reflection