A New Year With Responsibilities

2008 is going to be our year. It has to be. It is the only year we have. This is our time. It has to be because now is the only time we have. The past is gone and the future is not here yet. What we have is now, right now. So what do we do with this “right now” that we have.

Mimi shared a quote with me just today. It is from Thomas Merton:
"I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." There is good news. We are not alone in this time that we have. God is with us. The God made known through the Christ is with us.

That is one really good reason for having Christmas so close to New Years. We are reminded of time and we are assured who accompanies us through that time. But with that presence comes some guidance, some expectation. “I am with you, and for that to be all that it might be, this is what I want you to do.”

Matthew makes the requirements clear. Whenever you feed the hungry, cloth the naked, greet the stranger, or visit the prisoner, in that moment you are serving God through Christ and you are making the offering of yourself that God seeks. You are spending time as God wishes it spent. You are walking with God along God’s way.

The usual translations of this text talk about doing this to the least of these my brothers and sisters. Eugene Peterson says it this way.
“Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me--you did it to me.”

So that presence, that guidance, involves others. The offering our God seeks is given through service to others, especially the powerless.

Why that? Because it brings us into community with each other.
It makes us more a part of the greater human family and indeed all of creation.

Some of you may be casting about for some commitments to make for the coming year. I have a commitment for you. Some of you may already have some. To you I would suggest this addition. “I will do something for somebody at least x times a month, a week, or a day.
I will do it not for what I might get back for it but because I know deep down that is what God expects from me and wants for me.
God wants it for me because God wants the best for me and for all creation and God knows that a creation related to one another, caring for one another, caring about one another offers the closest thing to the kingdom of God that we can imagine and that has been God's agenda all along.”

So here it is in just a few hours, 2008. It is going to be our year. It has to be. It is the only year we have. But it is also God's year and God’s time. We should live it accordingly.

The Day Is Here

I don’t know how it happens, but it always does. Christmas is here. I know it was in all the papers. The stores certainly wanted me to know that the day was at hand. The number of catalogues should have been a tip off for sure. But still, here it is and I am somehow surprised. So soon it has arrived.

That was probably the way it was on the first Christmas. People had been waiting for years, centuries even. Suddenly, there in their midst was the child, the promise fulfilled. Many, in fact most, were not ready. Despite all the prophecies the child came and caught the world unaware.

Many tell us that people missed the messiah because their expectations were misplaced. They were looking for someone else, someone a bit more grand perhaps. Maybe that is the case with us. Maybe we keep waiting for something else and thus miss the child born into our midst. Maybe in the midst of the business of the season we get distracted from what is truly taking place among us. If that is the case, then great is our loss.

Into our world the light has come, the light that promises to illuminate our darknesses, to help us see our choices for what they are and what they should be. We can see the world for what it might become, for what it was intended to be rather than that with which we have become comfortable.

Open your eyes. I will open mine. The day has come. The Child is born. The light has shown. Christmas is here.