A Constant Christmas

   Maybe I have never thought about it before, at least consciously, but Christmas seems a bit different this year. Maybe it is age, and the fact that I have lived through so many of them, but this one seems unique.

   I guess each one is that way, as we age, as our kids get older, as our grand children grow up and as our circumstances change with the culture and our own personal situation.

   But this one just struck me this way as I got out and walked as the world around me was beginning to stir. It was December 24 but did not feel like Christmas. It was 64 degrees, humid, cloudy, and windy, and I was alone on the path.

   But it was not the weather conditions that fed my feelings. It was more than that.

   Our Virginia family was in town, we had been spending time together over meals and games, and that was good.

   Some Christmas elves had decorated our tree and one had stayed the night with us. That, too was good.

   But I had the constant feeling that Christmases in the future would never look like this one. I know it is true that each had been different, in its own special way, and I knew that this one would be also. But all of the ones in the past sorta get lumped together and just form a Christmas collage that designates the time.

   The one in the present is the one that we all share tomorrow.

   The ones that will come around on December 25th every year that is yet to grace our calendars will indeed be different from this one tomorrow.

   So is that just how life is? Is there any constant in this day?

   As I brought in the paper and laid it on the counter, took off the outer wrapper and spread it out, there it was:

   THE ONE CONSTANT IN CHRISTMAS

   Times, people and circumstances change all the time, but God's provision and His revelation are unchangeable.

   As the hymn states in stanza one:

   “Great is Thy faithfulness,” O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

   No shadow of turning taken from a phrase in James 1 that reads:

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

   So no matter the sentimentality of past Christmases or the uncertainty of future ones, there is a constant, and that is the provision and hope that I need to keep uppermost in my mind.

   MERRY CHRISTMAS