I admit to missing Christmas.  No time of the year is even close to being the same.  Even the commercials change in the new year.  And did you ever notice no other time of the year gets its own music?  We had a month to locate those stations that only played music of the season.  It is the holiday that affects most all we do.  Our houses get decorated.  We travel more whether shopping or going to visit.  Most groups hold parties of various kinds.  We don't even get too worked up about weather as we go about our business.  Now we are just trudging along in the new year.  Reality is upon us.

My son says we are into normal time now.  We are already counting the days until we can start anticipating the next holiday season.  Radio stations are back to playing the usual songs in their cycle.  Houses are bare of those things that say it's a special time.  We had snow on Christmas day.  That was exciting to go through a white Christmas.  Snow now just means our routines are turned upside down.  It's one thing for winter weather to hit on a holiday and quite another when it fouls up school systems.  We don't even have a reason to set off fireworks for another few months.  My son is right.  It is just normal time.

Perhaps the truth is that we live in normal time as a general rule.  We want our world to be like Christmas but it isn't.  We have grey, gloomy days that stretch out for weeks.  Rain takes the place of snow.  Going out in foul weather doesn't have the same appeal it does in December.  Everything is just the same or normal.  Celebrating seems like the last thing we want to do.  We live most of our days in normal time but never accept that.  This world can be an ugly place.  It often displays the worst of human nature.  Human tendency is to not rise above the ugliness.  We tend to allow our faith to settle for hoping for better days in some far off yonder time.  This life does have more than its share of pain but isn't that what God is here for? 

Believers do have a promise of eternity that is a perpetual Christmas of sorts.  But we also get to deal with the nastiness of the present day.  Denial nor escape are acceptable options.  We cannot simply wish for a better world.  It is what it is.  We may live in a normal time but we also trust an outrageous God.  He is our definition of what normal is all about no matter the season.  Our usual approach is to settle for the usual than to risk the outrageous.  May we learn how to live in the midst of the incredible as God shows up in our life.  It's a much shorter wait than waiting for the next holiday season.

Bro. Trey