Good morning, and Merry Christmas to you! Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day with me. I don’t take lightly the fact that, amid the helter-skelter of this Holiday, you’ve taken the time and interest to drop in. I’d like to offer you something of real worth in return, and having checked my traffic stats, it seems that my readers have already been pointing the way for me.
My readers are wise. They’ve been finding their way to a post I wrote a year ago today, in which I shared a still older writing of two years previous. I was 51 when I wrote that piece, and dealing with a broken heart, singleness, and loneliness. Yet, sitting alone in my apartment, I experienced a deep comfort and contentment that transcended my circumstances.
That was in 2007. Last year was different. Two years had elapsed, and my beloved friend, Lisa, had entered my life. In the midst of a new set of circumstances, I added a prelude to account for the time that had passed and then shared my original writing for the first time on Stormhorn.com.
Another year has now come and gone. Lisa and I have weathered a lean financial time in the face of what some have called The Great Recession. Since our needs are simple and Lisa has a practical attitude that flexes with life’s realities, we’ve managed to stay afloat and feel grateful. Along the way, we’ve made choices concerning each other and ourselves that have demonstrated our love for one another. It hasn’t always been easy for either of us. But it has been rewarding, and the gift of who Lisa is continues to shine more brightly in my eyes. What a unique, brilliant, talented, good-hearted, godly, and most beautiful woman the Lord has blessed me with!
Yet, knowing her heartaches as well as my own, more than ever I understand that the words I first wrote on Christmas Eve of 2007 are relevant today, and will remain so through the long years. Today, I reaffirm that Christmas–not “The Holidays,” as political correctness now insists that this occasion be called, but Christmas–is not about warm traditions, wonderful though they may be, but about a living, deeply invested Love that has reached out, and continues to reach, to those of us for whom this time of year seems anything but warm, or rich, or wonderful.
I cannot add to what I wrote three years ago; I can only introduce you to it from the context of today and hope that you will find meaning and encouragement in its message. Without further ado I now direct you to that writing, together with its preamble, in last year’s Christmas Eve post titled “A Christmas Meditation on Jesus.”
Whatever the realities of this season may be for you, may the great grace that is the driving force of true Christmas touch and uphold you in ways seen and unseen.
Your friend,
Bob
