From My Heart To Yours

This will be the last of my lunch hour ruminations for 2009. For the first time in our thirty-nine years together, Mary and I are going to share the full two-week Christmas vacation. We’re looking forward to being with family and friends, and to getting better acquainted with our future home. We’ve purchased a small Christmas tree that we’ll transplant to Fort Collins, and we accidentally acquired a 4” LED semblance that we’ll use to decorate Prudence. As I’ve explained in years past, I am among the thousands who learned the true meaning of Christmas from Dad’s candlelight services. The joy and hope of this season is to be found in dispelling the darkness by lighting that one little candle and letting its light spread. Hope is what I’d like to both give and receive this Christmas, although I’m not wildly optimistic about that happening. The dark evil which pervades our planet is, like President Obama stated in his Nobel address, very real. Greed is rampant and apparently triumphant as special interests seemingly delight in destroying our economy, our health care, and anything else that can be turned for a profit. But I am forced to remember that things looked equally dark to those oppressed by the Roman Empire two-thousand years ago, and that’s when the light of hope first presented itself in such a way that even the least among them was inspired. So, that’s my New Year’s resolution: to not lose the hope in my own life so that I may share it with others. I think that’s what Jesus would do.