That is what Georgia Karr,
the world’s best mother-in-law, always said, as she slumped into an easy chair
on the afternoon of Dec. 24. Over. The buying, the making, the wrapping, the
cooking, the smiling, all of it—over.
There is another way that
nothing is as over as Christmas: God spoke the complete Word of Christ once, in
the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The Word of Love. The Word of You Matter. The
first word, and the final word. Alpha and Omega.
Once. That was enough. But
it’s like that good story Grandpa always tells at Christmas. It is a
once-upon-a-time story… “once”… but it’s a repeat story, too. It happened once,
but it’s such a good story, such an important story, that it needs to be
repeated, retold, relived.
God birthed Love into the
world once, came to us in the flesh, incarnate, once, but each Christmas we
retell the story.
Nothing is as over as
Christmas. But Christmas is never over.
John Robert McFarland
I’m a little embarrassed
to post what I wrote above. It sounds so trite, a cliché you’d find on a card
from The Dollar Store. I’m supposed to tell little stories that are sometimes
semi-humorous and let folks draw their own lessons from them, not spout some
oxymoronic simplism. But it reminds me of my friend, The Rev. Jean Cramer-Heuerman,
gone from us much too soon. Jean and I used to sit in the back of the room at church
conference meetings and make snide remarks behind out hands to each other about
the stupid clichés the leaders winded off with. But then we both got cancer at
the same time. Once, while we were both still in treatment, Jean whispered to
me, “You know, all the clichés are true. That’s why they are clichés.”
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