It won’t be long until things return to normal. If you’ve been living out of a suitcase and traveling during these weeks, the coming days will see your clothes moving back in to your dresser and your toiletries returning to the cabinet or drawer where they belong. If you hosted guests in your home, the Laundry Fairy (at least that is who punches the clock at our place) will make her rounds to wash up the bedding and wipe everything down.
It won’t be long until things return to normal. For the last month, the feng shui in the living room has been all wrong, while you made room for the big tree with lights. Soon, you can move the big easy chair and ottoman back where they belong. Momentarily, one of the central decorations of Christmas can be put out on the curb for recycling, used for kindling in the back yard, or folded up and stored in the crawl space until next year.
It won’t be long until things return to normal. Holiday decorations will come off the front porch and counter tops, ginger bread houses will be tossed in the garbage, garland will be pulled down from doorways, and Advent wreaths will be nestled back in the box. Even the crèche will be disassembled and baby Jesus will be smothered in bubble wrap for another eleven months.
Whether the weeks surrounding Christ-mas and New Year celebrations are the “the most wonderful time of the year” for you, or a period of longing for how things used to be, this season is anything but normal. As we wait for, and welcome the Christ child, we turn our homes and lives up on end. So… after we sing the last of the Christmas carols and exhale the final
breaths of 2016, we want to return to the stability and balance of normal.
We get busy, like squirrels on an autumn nut gathering frenzy, collecting and stashing all the holiday ornaments and goodies until next year, as if ridding our homes of any sign of Christmas will help us re-establish equilibrium. But with the birth of a little one among us, things don’t – and won’t – return to “normal.” Instead, a new way of living exists. We think and plan for more than just ourselves. Staring down 2017, our days are laced with anticipation for the unexpected and we live with an increased awareness that life is bigger than us.
Phillips Brooks, in his classic O little town of Bethlehem, gives us many hints that life will never be the same:
O holy child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin, and enter in,
be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell;
oh, come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Immanuel!
Trees and ornaments may be put away and guests may have headed for home, but Jesus has come to stay for good. While there may not be any sign of Christmas in our living spaces, God has taken up residence in the world and continues to be about the work of Love in and through us. We can’t silence the work of Christ or the message of comfort, hope, and joy that he brings.
Welcome to the new normal,
Pastor Lowell