Category Archives: December

Milestones

20 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by in Christmas, December, Jesus Christ, Life and death

≈ 2 Comments

“In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

* * *

One definition listed for “milestone” is “an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development.” It seems that as humans we like to do that, to mark our passage through life, our achievements, to measure our progress. Today is my 75th birthday, a definite historical milestone for me.

It’s interesting how we quantify time in our lives. Young children boast about their age counting by single specific years. “I’m five, but I’m gunna be six,” or seven or eight. Later it’s a bit more reluctant and less specific, by the decade: in my twenties, thirties, forty-ish. At this juncture I can gauge my lifespan by quarter-century marks, three of them! Yikes. That’s a lot of water under the bridge as they say, some of it a peaceful meandering stream, and at other times a raging torrent.

The Bible’s Book of James says, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” James is probably testifying to Psalm 144:4 which says, “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.” But as we all know, some folk’s shadows disappear more quickly than others. Just a while back the local 10 o’clock news reported on the tragic death of a nine-year-old boy struck by a car and killed on his way home from school. Changing to a more upbeat tone, the news anchor’s next item to report was the celebration of a great-grandmother’s 102nd birthday. What a perplexing paradox. On the eve of my birthday five years ago I lost a dear friend to an accidental death. He was just 26, an Army vet who had served without a scratch in Afghanistan. I was hoping to have years of buddy time together, but sadly it was not to be. Last year right before Thanksgiving a young man I was just starting to get to know better without warning took his own life. It’s this cruel disparity in the days of our lives that makes me scratch my spiritual head and wonder, Hey, what’s this all about anyway? How does God decide when to click the stopwatch on and off?

Although we like to think otherwise, much of what happens in the universe remains a mystery, the answers known only to God. I do believe, however, He gives us enough information and guidance to live out our allotted time on this planet as well as we can. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom,” prays the writer of Psalm 90, traditionally attributed to Moses, who himself lived to be 120. It is wise, then, to be aware of our ever impending mortality.

In thinking about writing this post, I remembered the lines quoted above in the intro from T.S. Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the poem’s subject lamenting that his life basically amounts to nothing other than the droll repetition of one uneventful, insignificant day after another. As with any piece of art or literature, there are critics and a variety of interpretations. One such commentator on the poem writes, “The image of the coffee spoon is one of middle-class domesticity. The idea of measuring one’s life with such an instrument implies a lack of risk or excitement; instead of big decisions or milestone events defining the course of his life, all Prufrock has with which to mark his time on earth is the quotidian coffee spoon.” That, my friends, is a real tragedy. A purposeless, unfulfilled, empty life isn’t life at all, but a painfully prolonged expectation of one’s ultimate termination in the grave, when time mercifully runs out.

In a complete contrast, the Bible is full of advice on profitable time management, just one of the keys to a life worth living. “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16). How relevant is that age-old advice today! [Go to https://www.openbible.info/topics/time_management for many more examples.]

Life can be anything but mundane. Shouldn’t we then treasure every minute we have, to vigorously live out the destiny God so graciously offers us, to leave a legacy of faith and love behind to our family, friends and neighbors? Even at this late stage of my life I want to “get a heart of wisdom,” and to learn how to properly “number our days.” Personally, with that perspective put into practice, I’m hoping for more than a measure of coffee spoons to be recorded on my tombstone. What about you?

Will you make this Christmas season the most important milestone in your life with a decision to believe that God sent His Son Jesus Christ to save us all from a purposeless life and to give you eternal hope? Don’t let this moment of opportunity pass. Follow the spiritual star of divine inspiration leading to your personal encounter with the Savior. Sing from a truly happy heart for the very first time,
O come all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem
Come and behold Him
Born the King of Angels
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
Christ the Lord.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Frozen Art

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in December, poem, winter

≈ Leave a comment

My mother introduced me to Jack Frost
one early evening in a long ago December
as we huddled together in the dark
next to a front room window,
the cold from outside finding its way inside,
chilling our almost cheek-to-cheek faces.
Those were the days way before our
obsession with R-factors and insulation.
(I mean, we had lead and asbestos everywhere.)

Smiling, she pointed to Jack’s artful depiction of
a bouquet of frozen ferns etched with such
delicate grace on the thin pane of glass.
The frost was silvery white until the headlamps
from passing cars momentarily drenched the
designs with rainbow rich purples and
magentas and sparkling yellows.

Frost_patterns_2

Inside my impressionable four-year-old head
the magic made perfect sense, enchanting
a tender imagination before reason and
education would cruelly dispel sprites and
faeries and innocence and assumptions that
anything might be possible.

And so we gazed through that brittle canvass,
silently waiting for Pops to come home from work.
The corner streetlight seemed so alone out there,
a mysterious glowing globe of amber straining
with every possible watt to penetrate the long
hours of yet another bitter winter’s night.

A Christmas Carol

18 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by in Charles Wesley, Christmas, Christmas Carol, December, Jesus Christ

≈ Leave a comment

Today we say “Happy Birthday” to Charles Wesley, born in Epworth, England, 1707. Often eclipsed historically by his better known brother – Methodist co-founder and fiery preacher, John – Charles has nonetheless left a significant mark on the Protestant persuasion, composing literally thousands of church hymns during his lifetime of 81 years.

Preaching in the open air to tens of thousands, John did most of the preaching, while Charles led the faithful in hymns at revival meetings. They were not always welcomed, however, sometimes met by raucous mobs who threw stones, dirt and eggs in their faces. Charles WesleyTraveling by horseback from one town to the next, if Charles thought of a hymn, he would detour to the house of the nearest acquaintance, demand a pen and ink and write it down.

Personally I have heard only a few of those inspiring melodies, but during the Christmas season I have frequent opportunities to hear my favorite, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Usually sung robustly by a festive choir surrounded by sparkling candle lights and streams of ornamental holly, it’s an almost must-do song for traditional Christmas Eve services. A thundering pipe organ accompaniment always adds an element of soul-stirring intensity to the performance.

My favorite lyric in the entire piece is simply “God and sinners reconciled,” a short but dynamic phrase that to me expresses the whole idea of why we actually celebrate a day called Christmas. It’s John 3:16 and all the rest of the Bible presented in a way that anyone, anywhere, of any age can understand. No doctorate in theology needed. Adam broke the relationship with God through disobedience. Jesus, the last Adam and the Second Man, made it possible to get back to the original plan: eternal life with the Creator, on a personal relationship level.

Reconcile is a word often used as a legal and accounting term. It can mean to win over to friendliness; to cause to become amicable; to settle a quarrel or dispute; to bring into agreement or harmony, make compatible; to restore. These definitions also make perfect sense describing what salvation is basically all about. So when I hear this blessed carol during the next few days, my heart will pound a little bit stronger knowing that the animosity between God and myself is gone because of a baby born in Bethlehem. “Mild he lays his glory by, Born that we no more shall die, Born to raise us from the earth, Born to give us second birth.”

Bravo, Charles Wesley! The herald angels are still singing.

The Winter Solstice

21 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Celtic Christmas, December, Solstice, Stonehenge, winter

≈ Leave a comment

Today in our northern hemisphere we observe the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the longest night. On the calendar it’s the first day of winter and one of the oldest known holidays in human history. Historians claim that solstice celebrations go back for millennia, back to a time of our most primitive fears and dark superstitions, when the sun or its absence played a major role in forming the basis of many early cultures and religions. Everyone knows, for example, that the monoliths of Stonehenge were supposedly erected to monitor the cycle of the seasons, especially to frame the first rays of an austere winter’s sun.

I won’t actually see the sun this afternoon, dipping as low as it can go, hugging the frozen bare-boned horizon. The sky is a blanket of stratus cloud gloom. Looks like gray granite, and feels just as heavy. Nonetheless, I’m enjoying a collection of Celtic Christmas tunes. The 2-cd case describes the music as a “medley of relaxing and festive melodies.” And it is truly so, featuring harp, violin, guitar, cello and an occasional Irish flute, punctuated by whistles and of course, the bagpipe. The sound is so mellow I could easily sit here next to the fire with a mug full of blended orange cinnamon tea all afternoon. I’ve had enough of Bing’s White Christmas and José’s Feliz Navidad blaring out of the car radio since the day after Thanksgiving. Right now I need simple. I need consolation and assurance that as the sun enters Sagittarius it will begin to climb again, upward towards the promise of yet another spring.

Listening to an instrumenwintersolsticetal version of the centuries old God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, I know that if it were sung, I would hear the encouraging lyric “Let nothing you dismay.” I will take that advice to heart today, laying aside my cares and trials that in the big picture really don’t at all affect the mechanics or outcome of the universe. Whether I am here or not, Old Sol, according to astrophysicists in the know, will continue to fuse hydrogen atoms into an unimaginable amount of energy every second, burning bright for another five billion years. I, however, am not very certain about what will even happen to me tomorrow.

Frozen Art

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in December, poem, winter

≈ Leave a comment

Wrote these lines a few months ago, in the heat of summer. Don’t know why I thought about it then.

My mother introduced me to Jack Frost
one early evening in a long ago December
as we huddled together in the dark
next to a living room window,
the cold from outside finding its way inside
chilling our almost cheek-to-cheek faces.
Those were the days way before
our phobia with R-factors and insulation.
(I mean, we had lead and asbestos everywhere.)

Smiling, she pointed to Jack’s artful bouquet of frozen ferns
etched with such delicate grace on a thin pane of glass.
The frost was silvery white until the headlamps from passing cars
momentarily tinted the designs with rainbow rich
purples and magentas and yellows.

Inside my four-year-old head,
the magic made perfect sense,
feeding a tender imagination before reason and education
would dispel sprites and faeries and innocence and
all thoughts that anything might be possible.

And so we gazed through that brittle canvass,
silently waiting for Pops to come home from work.
The corner streetlight seemed so alone out there,
a mysterious glowing globe of amber
straining with every possible watt to penetrate
the long hours of yet another bitter winter’s night.