Edited by Gerald Boerner
Commentary:
We come again to that time in the holiday season to celebrate Christmas. This complex holiday emerged out of both secular and sacred traditions to its present status of a Christian celebration with heavy commercial overtones. This was especially evident this year when our country is in a prolonged economic turndown (or recession) with high unemployment. Top that off with the heavy rains and snow, we have a formula that calls for hope.
While these conditions should elicit a response from Christians through their churches, we have seen more of a response fron the non-religious agencies. And they have stepped up! There have been toy drives, food drives, etc., but not through our Christian churches. Secular agencies like TV stations have filled in. Perhaps Christians should heed this as a wake-up call.
One of the most sacred traditions of Christians historically been the individual call to service. It is not just up to the clergy, it is the individuals that need to respond with their generosity an time. I remember as a junior higher facing a very bleak Christmas soon after my parents were divorced. We were living on welfare; on Christmas some of the curch members brought some second-hand toys and games. It was like we had hit the jackpot!
So I ask you to give thought to these issues as you read through today’s message. Explore your own feelings and actions and set some goals in your New Year’s resolutions for 2011… GLB
These Introductory Comments are copyrighted:
Copyright©2010 — Gerald Boerner — All Rights Reserved[ 1373 Words ]
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Quotations Related to CHRISTMAS
“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”
— Laura Ingalls Wilder
“It’s quite a famous story that takes place on Christmas Eve, and the Germans, French, and Scottish are trying to make peace one night and they bury their dead and they play football. I play a German opera singer, in German, which I never have so I am really excited about that.”
— Diane Kruger (on the “Christmas Truce of 1914)
“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
— Charles Dickens