As always, I feel as if I am at least a couple of days behind on this blog (well, I'm probably behind on more than that, but I'm not going to get too stressed about it today!). Anyway, I'm sitting here at home while most everyone else is starting back to work, school, and the other normal activities of life. Really, I have been working today because I've been mostly off for the past week, but the office is closed so I'm not catching up on some things at home.
We're still in the Twelve Days of Christmas which means that our tree is still up and decorated and the house has a festive look to it. However, most of our neighbors have put their trees by the side of the road, all the things I've put off until after the first of the year now need to be done, and my calendar is about to become very full. Ugh!
This is a good time for me to re-read words by Frederick Buechner in his book, Now and Then.
"Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly."
What this means for me is that it is about time to stop looking for Jesus in the manger and begin looking for him in the midst of the everyday parts of my life, the parts I cherish and the parts I take for granted, the parts I wish I could ignore and the parts I embrace, the parts that cause stress and the parts that lift me up. God, the Incarnate One, is in all of them, if only I will look.
"There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it." And isn't that the point of Christmas anyway?
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