It will be Christmas this Wednesday. For many people it is a time of celebration and joy. For some others it is a time of pain and loneliness and for many throughout the world it is nothing in particular. So, why do we make such a big thing of it?
The way I see it, as a Christian, we are celebrating the birth of a very special person who showed us through his life, what goodness and truth and compassion look like in the flesh. And though we sometimes seem to portray Christmas as a kind of fairy tale - it wasn't at all. Jesus' life was hard and full of challenge and suffering and rejection. He knew though that he had a gift to give that was unlike any other and yet many, many people turned against what he had to share.
I do wonder at times, how we can reject goodness. I am pretty sure we all admire it as a human quality and wish we could be like it. As people did with say, Nelson Mandela whose recent death has been a reminder of the goodness in his life. Perhaps it is that we are not good at accepting the messenger, the carrier of goodness or compassion or truth because they also seem too human, too much like us. We focus on the flaws, trying to tip the pedestal we ourselves have put them on not realizing their flaws (and our own) are part of the gift of their humanity. Without the flaws perhaps they would not be the people we also admire.
I thought about all this recently because someone wrote an article about Nelson Mandela headed: N.M. Saint or Sinner? I found myself saying, but of course, he was both. We all are.
As Christians we do believe that Jesus was the one person who could show us perfectly what humanity could be. Even so lots of people criticized him, hated him and thought he was a fraud. So maybe the lesson is to see the best in others, be grateful for it and keep on working to be better ourselves.
The message of God at Christmas comes to us in a human being; someone who had a race, a personality, ideas, a family, a culture - someone, in other words, amazingly like us. People used to say of him ' how can he be special, after all we know his parents, we know where he came from, we watched him grow up?'...
I believe the message in all this, is that our humanity is indeed, the precious instrument of all that is good in our world if we allow it. Our daily living can be filled with all the qualities we love in him. We believe he made that possible. But it is a time to recognize and accept our own responsibility to live out daily the gifts we have received, the power we are given. So isn't it a time for great celebration of hope and joy?
 |
..and a journey too during which, it is never too late to start again.
* Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992. The poem is called 'Magellan'.
1 comment:
I think an important lesson to keep in mind is that we don't have to be perfect to make a difference and bring goodness into the world. We all contain elements of the divine. And yes, it is a responsibility as well as a privilege to share our gifts and love with others. Perhaps some people reject goodness because it makes them feel inadequate. But I think we should remember that just because we can't do everything, that is not an excuse not to do something to make the world a better place.
Post a Comment