Christmas Draws Near – A Reflection

Christmas draws closer as it does every year

Yet this year is different

How does one prepare for Christmas in the midst of a Pandemic

How does one create the atmosphere when we are isolated, alone

Christmas 2020… no further comment needed

In the midst of it all a voice speaks to my soul

The voice of one whom I was first introduced to decades ago

Howard Thurman reminds me

This is what the season of preparation is all about

Christmas is…

Where the refugees seek deliverance that never comes,

And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,

Where little children age before their time,

And life wears down the edges of the mind,

Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,

Where bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,

Where fear companions each day’s life,

And Perfect Love seems long delayed.

CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:

In you, in me, in all (hu)mankind. – Howard Thurman (The Mood of Christmas, p. 23)