January Reflection

The Christ-event is a historical reality that occurred approximately two thousand years ago. Our annual recognition and celebration of Christmas as that historical event is important because it reminds us that our Faith is not based on a fairy tale but rather on a verifiably recorded happening that took place in a recognized part of the world that we can visit today, where we recognize the names and places where Jesus the Messiah was born, grew up, lived, preached, performed miracles, transformed hearts, inspired disciples, suffered, and ultimately died for each one of us. And none of that was surprising; it was all accomplished in fulfillment of the recorded promises of God over time.

And now some 2000 years after His incarnation we are embedded with the essentials of a Faith that inspires the way we live, interact, love, and die. There is so much to unpack in the Christ story that has been recounted, preached, explained, dramatized, and captured musically in different ways throughout our lives. Somehow we still wonder if we truly understand the depths of what it really means in terms of our own birth, the various stages of our life, our mortality, and our own resurrection in time.

It is essential that we use these post-Christmas days to find some quiet time to open our hearts, our minds, and our souls to welcome the re-birth of Jesus within each of us and all of us. When we look out from our quiet consciousness we might better see each other as children of God, as brothers and sisters, with gifts and talents and needs and weaknesses and faults and shortcomings and annoying habits and disabilities and mental illness and pride and humility, even goodness, and yes even the Love that reflects the presence of God that is within each one of us, even if it is well-disguised at times. That Love is deep within us because we were all formed in the image and likeness of God. With that point of view we are ready to celebrate that Jesus is reborn within us in the dawning of a New Year.

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