A different Christmas

Our world makes it challenging to keep Christ in Christmas. Anyone else notice that? Don’t get me wrong.. I love this season. The lights and festivities. I’m a Christmas baby and I find this time of year magical. I love experiencing it with my family and friends..  Shopping, partying, sleep-overs after late night caroling, etc. Somehow Christmas has become something we barely survive.  But more than anything, we should make it meaningful.

Have we ever thought to think how would Jesus be celebrating his birthday? Would he race from one event to another? Would he spend money on stuffs people didn’t need? Or would he give generously to meet the real needs? Would he make time for the people around him? Christmas is about so much more than presents and parties, and yet, each year, that is the focus that we as a society place on it. Christmas has become a stress for some, and financial hardship for others. We have somehow lost touch with our roots, and a meaningful soulful Christmas.

We should remember the true meaning of Christmas—the birthday of Jesus Christ—but at the same time it should also be a time to give thanks and appreciate our blessings. Advent is a time of preparation for the birth of Christ at Christmas; use this preparation period as a time to reflect and grow as a person. This Christmas what if you bought one less present, a few less gift cards and use that money to bless someone in need or what if you carved out quality time to truly celebrate with people in your life? I’d want to encourage you to give your family a different kind of present this year. This gift is not something that can be found in stores or can be wrapped up in a shinny box. Instead, it comes from inside your heart. But don’t be fooled, this special present can dramatically alter the lives of each family member forever. It’s the gift of your time. In this busy world we are all in a rush. We end up forgetting our priorities. When we reflect on the message of Christ, we should be inspired to give and not to receive.

The good news is that this Christmas season can be different. How? It starts with a choice. You can choose to make this celebration of Christmas the most meaningful one ever. You can make a choice to not allow the urgent things that characterize the Christmas season to crowd out the important values that signify what Christmas is really all about.

Christ came to give Himself for others. This Christmas you can choose to build, nourish and cherish those you love in new ways. But don’t stop yet. Don’t merely focus on what you can do. Ask yourself when will you do it? Schedule quality time for what you have, in advance, determined is most important. Don’t give that which is most precious the crumbs of your day. Make those values a priority and squeeze your other activities around those values and priorities. An integral part of Christmas celebrations is to praise God and Christ in both formal and personal prayers. Christmas is “God with us.” Christmas is God becoming man so that He might “give His life a ransom for many.” Put first things first. Come celebrate Jesus! Then go shopping!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas! :D




Go through this video if you can spare a little bit more time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOeDW8D6grs

Hope On!!

                                            

Thirty years ago, William Lynch lamented: “We human beings, who need hope more than anything else in life, have written little about it” (Lynch, 1987:21). To be sure, therapists and theologians, psychologists and philosophers have filled this gap since in some measure. Yet, a curious fact remains: a much larger body of literature exists on the luminal experience we call despair than on the life-engendering presence and function of hope.

According to Greek mythology, the first woman on Earth, Pandora, was given a box that she was not to open under any circumstance. Too curious to resist, she opened it, and all of the evils of the world flew out: hate, pain, destructiveness, starvation. When Pandora saw what she had done, she closed the box before the last thing in there could escape. That last thing was hope.

Hope is the belief that circumstances in the future will be better. It's not a wish that things will get better, but an actual belief, even when there may be no evidence that anything will change. Hope can encompass a wide variety of beliefs -- everything from a high school student hoping for an A in algebra to a cancer patient hoping for a cure.

Christian hope derives its enduring and living quality out of the historical accomplishment of God in Christ on our behalf. In the incarnation, God entered this world of suffering and death in loving solidarity. In the crucifixion, Christ experienced this world in its sin and suffering reconciling it to the Father who, in the resurrection, inaugurated a historical process that moves the world towards the fulfillment of the eschatological promise. Hope is as light as a feather. Hope keeps all of us together  Hope is ubiquitous and free of cost. Hope is the last thing ever lost. Since history is moving towards its real future in God, one of the presuppositions of Christian hope is the passage of time towards God’s promised end, an end that was already present in the world in the resurrection of Christ.  Hope is a bright shining light which keeps darkness at the bay. Hope is gentle cold breeze on a hot summer day. Hope is to remain positive when going gets tough. Hope is seeking more when others think u had enough!

Just as God has taken up the humanity of the incarnate Son in Christ’s ascension, so the believer hopes that God will take up the entire cosmos into the Trinitarian unity of his own person so that in the end God will be “all in all” (Eph 1:22-23).

P.S. - This was an article written by me for DSYM Youth Beats E-Paper.

Old age is a Reality.

A frail old man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year-old grandson. The old man's hands trembled, his eyesight was blurred, and his step faltered. The family ate together at the table. But the elderly grandfather's shaky hands and failing sight made eating difficult. Peas rolled off his spoon onto the floor. When he grasped the glass, milk spilled on the tablecloth. The son and daughter-in-law became irritated with the mess. We must do something about Grandfather," said the son. I've had enough of his spilled milk, noisy eating, and food on the floor. So the husband and wife set a small table in the corner. There, Grandfather ate alone while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. Since Grandfather had broken a dish or two, his food was served in a wooden bowl.

When the family glanced in Grandfather's direction, sometimes he had a tear in his eye as he sat alone. Still, the only words the couple had for him were sharp admonitions when he dropped a fork or spilled food.

The four-year-old watched it all in silence. One evening before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor. He asked the child sweetly, "What are you making?" Just as sweetly, the boy responded, "Oh, I am making a little bowl for you and Mama to eat your food when I grow up." The four-year-old smiled and went back to work.

The words so struck the parents that they were speechless. Then tears started to stream down their cheeks. Though no word was spoken, both knew what must be done. That evening the husband took Grandfather's hand and gently led him back to the family table. For the remainder of his days he ate every meal with the family. And for some reason, neither husband nor wife seemed to care any longer when a fork was dropped, milk spilled, or the tablecloth soiled.

Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffeted by a dark wind— But what?

On harsh weed-stalks the flock has rested the snow is covered with broken seed husks and the wind tempered with a shrill piping of plenty. 

Old age is a reality.If you plan to live longer, you cant escape old-age. Your bones are gonna get weaker, your skins are gonna die, you eye-sight is gonna get weaker, you will be dependent one day. So if you want people around you infact your very own loved ones, start helping the old worn out humans around you. 

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquility of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.