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MAJESTY & MEANING [The Manger]
Only a few weeks ago, Halloween costumes and candy bags filled store displays, and now, we’re headlong into the holiday season, it seems … barely a moment to breathe between Thanksgiving and Christmas, before the New Year begins and we wonder once again, where we have been, and what we have done with all of that time. It is agonizingly slow at times, any notable progress on this path. We start out with so many goals, hopes, aspirations … promises to ourselves of the difference we will make this year, in our own and other hearts, if only given the chance … And then Christmas arrives, once again, and we are humbled by the songs of the season, telling of the wilderness birth of an infant King in a country where little light existed but for the Faith guiding gifted souls … imagine the distance these "seers" were willing to travel back then, just to see and be in the presence of the Savior Jesus Christ and coming Messiah, who would reign on earth to set us free ... I wonder about the majesty of that experience at times, how transforming it must have been to witness the birth of Jesus Christ. "Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King", a Christmas anthem proclaims - and I want to be there too, see it all first hand, touch and hold the baby Christ, and let His love pour through me, heal me in places I didn't know were broken, so I know without question that my Faith is real, that Christ is real, that He lived and reigned, just as the ancient texts proclaim, to give us all his Holy name in Faith. Now, we live in such distant and disconnected times, so far removed from the original experience and the heart of who we are, it is hard in the midst of such discord to fathom life so long ago, in that “Little town of Bethlehem” where Jesus Christ was born … Yet still, we try, reaching for this spiritual substance in our lives … and once a year, in common Spirit, sing and seek in seasonal songs and symbols, some new understanding of the meaning of Christmas … so we may know, if only for a second suspended in Time, what it must have been like to be there and bear witness to such a miraculous birth … through the song and Spirit of Christmas …
Crayons & Christmas [The Gift] 2004 Holidays & Healing [The Hope] 2005
© 2006 Phyllis A Travis
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