NOTHING IS AS OVER AS CHRISTMAS [M, 12-27-21

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

 

NOTHING IS AS OVER AS CHRISTMAS   [M, 12-27-21, a repeat from Sat, 12-28-19, and I think from some other years before that, too!]

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. 25. 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. One story, one Word, but told over and over, in a thousand different languages, in a million different voices…

Nothing is as over as Christmas. But Christmas is never over.

John Robert McFarland