At Year's End

Where did the year go? That's what everyone always says, isn't it. Someone said that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The nearer it gets to the end, the faster it goes. The year sort of goes like that too.

In a football frame of mind yesterday, I went to the grocery store and ended up buying some chips and salsa. There just are not really healthy chips, are there...but they surely are good. I had planned to watch the Penn State-Texas A&M game with the faithful in Sarasota last night, but fog rolled in about 6, and I decided it would be better for people on the road if I stayed home. And so I did. It's not quite as much fun to watch it alone as it is with a crowd. But Penn State prevailed. It didn't look like they would at the start.

I find it a little sad when Christmas is over. All the pretty decorations come down, and it's back to business as usual. Last year I wrote a post in which I quoted from Lauren Winner's book, Girl Meets God.

She writes: "The calendar tells us that this all culminates on December 25, but really the whole season slouches toward Easter. Jesus became incarnate now, in the manger of Bethlehem, but if His incarnateness is meant to make Him more relatable to us, if we are meant to have better access to God because our God has a body like we have, if we relate to Him better because He knows what it is like to weep and throw up and be tempted and suffer, then the Incarnation that starts on Christmas isn't finished until Good Friday. And the miracles that start in the strange inexplicable Virgin Birth aren't finished until the Resurrection.....Even his birthplace takes us to the Last Supper: Jesus, the Bread of Life, is born in Bethlehem, bet lechem, "house of bread," and at the Last Supper, He will break bread for us, and then on the cross He will break His body. Nothing in Scripture, even the names of birthplace towns, is coincidence."

I didn't have an opportunity to sing in my church's Christmas concert this year because I had been away so much, but I had the privilege to listen. Some of the songs were traditional; some were new. This particular one expresses to me, like Lauren's quote above, what Christmas really is all about. The title is "I Believe" written by Natalie Gr*nt.

In a land far away, timestood still long ago.
There were shepherds in fields,
This is how the story goes, the story goes.

Woman with child and an inn with no room.
Born in a manger, foretelling a tomb,
This is how the story goes.

But it's more than a stable,
and it's more than a fairy tale,
and more than my mind can conceive--
I believe.

The wise men saw the baby boy
the angels called the Son of God.
Heaven's child, the great I AM,
born to take away my sin through nail-pierced hands
Emmanuel has come. I believe.

Two thousand years, still the story lives on.
God's gift to us, sent to earth wrapped in flesh,
His only Son--His only Son.

And the heartbeat of heaven confounded our wisdom,
But it's still the simple truth that set me free.
I believe the wise men saw the baby boy
the angels called the Son of God.
Heaven's child, the great I AM
Born to take away my sin through nail-pierced hands.
Emmanuel has come and I believe.

Precious child, how can it be
That God's great plan for history
would send you to a lonely tree,
That you would come for one like me?
I believe.