Always Christmas, Never Winter
Thursday, December 27, 2012 at 09:28AM 
Wednesday night, the evening after Christmas, our little girl laid by the fire and said, “Christmas goes too quickly.” I smiled a grown-up smile--the kind tinged with sadness--because I knew work was already calling. The world continued to turn. The business of life demanded my attention again. Our Christmas pause (happy as it was) was over. Already that night I had checked email twice, looking to get a jump on the work day ahead.
Yet in that moment by the fire the true wisdom came from our daughter’s heart. Christmas was over too soon, and only a fool would not pause to lament its passing.
Here’s an exercise: imagine the happiest ending to any story ever told. Don’t hold back. Dream of something impossibly good. Infuse “happily ever after” with every practical joy you know. Now double it. If it doesn’t feel too foolish, write down the crazy joy and keep it stored in your phone so you can see it every time it comes to mind.
It’s a righteous exercise, the discipline of a mind engaged with the goodness of God. The surprising reality is that the New Testament urges us time and again to indulge ourselves with speculations of delight. The Apostle Paul concludes his prayer for others with, “to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” Peter comforts a suffering minority with the phrase “Joy unspeakable, full of glory.” Reframing Isaiah, Paul exhorts reminds us neither can our eyes see, nor our ears hear--no, never could it enter into our hearts--all that God has planned for us.
Time and again he invites us to exercise our imagination toward his goodness and our destiny, because he cares for us. His care is complete. His goodness is without end. Love guides his immeasurable power. Our childish view of life with God does not contain too many pictures of delight, but too few--and too small.
Centuries later C.S. Lewis added his take: “You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been us for nearly a hundred years.” Wordsworth chided us: “We have given our hearts away.” His powerful poem opens with the simple observation, “The world is too much with us, late and soon/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”
Better to live in the lament of Christmas gone too soon than to face grimly the “reality” of a workaday world. Better still--what if we discovered the path to unspeakable joy in the everyday business of life. What if Father Christmas has gifts to give us each and every day?
References (1)
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Response: tropemgier.com.plAlways Christmas, Never Winter - Home - studentsofjesus
Reader Comments (4)
When I (we) reflect upon life, mine divinely and graciously filled in abundance with many separate memories bound in my heart and mind by the greatest joy of beginning to the deepest lament of ending, a single picture develops of growth which is me (us). I have witnessed (we are witnessing) in person an empty canvas from which is emerging more clear after each and every graceful stroke of the brush a dynamic breath of life inhaling us ever closer into fulfillment through the love of relationship within it. This began into endless continuation for each of us when His brush applied the birth of our unique pigment to layer and intermingle with those before us. This masterpiece began for us as a whole on the canvass of Earth, titled “Mankind”, when the Artist chose to begin this His self portrait.
As life progresses I testify to those younger it goes by faster and faster. Thirty years ago I told a very spiritual friend I just don’t care whether there is a Heaven or a Hell because each is beyond my ability to comprehend. That is so today but twenty years ago I realized I could not possibly experience all the “Joy unspeakable, full of glory” in a mere 120 years possible on this Earth. The tendency, when we think we can, is to try to do it all now in place of savoring what we have now. I love the smell of roses, one of the few strong scents I am not allergic to, and do take the time graced to me to appreciate. I love my fellow mankind and I do take the time graced to me to lament the too often cut short relationships in my life. There is no greater sense of value for relationship than when it is no longer possible to share. I no longer care if life goes by faster and faster as long as I can trust that life is eternal and that I have nothing I need to catch up to in order to survive; which by the grace of God I do.
Ray, your little girl valued Christmas highly because you shared with her and her with you. Life is at its highest value for any of us when we share together our greatest joys and deepest laments. It is from pausing our active time to reflectively savor what was that we can most anticipate with hope what can be even greater just over the next crest, or around the next bend, along this path we share.
This Christmas season has been fraught with mankind hurting too many innocent others of their own kind simply because they had no anticipation with hope for what could have been. I am wondering what I can do to bring an eternal joy of Christmas into another’s otherwise hopeless winter as you did for your little girl.
Thank you.
Thanks for you thoughts, Herm. Merry Christmas to you--all year long.
Mom passed at a time during the day normal work ideally ends for most at 5pm. This hour on a day of the year in the past where she might have first found some respite from the most exhausting work I’ve witnessed her do all year; making Christmas work for every one she knew, loved and wanted so very much to be loved by. Her work for us all was completed on Saturday, December 29, 2012. My mother knew in her heart and mind that she could finally find that ever elusive rest with my father after a grueling twenty five years of separation. Most of us who knew them, I am certain, pray they rest together in peace and joy sharing the fruits, without the work, of Christmas always and ever more. amen
I'm sorry for your loss, Herm, and I'm grateful for our comfort in Christ.