Christmas is here. Yet again. When the first Christmas came along, the Old Testament became New Testament. Salvation history took a twist; our idea of who God is radically changed. Since that first time, Christmas never left us. We all accumulate our own personal history as we march through life. At some point during our history, we encountered Christ, our own personal idea of God changed. That would have been our own first Christmas.

I like to watch the sun rising. The sun gradually reveals itself. Darkness becomes light. Like the cycle of a day, the lights do sometimes go out of our life even when we have found God. But like the sun the following morning, light will again rise above darkness. This will go on throughout our life but with each sunrise, we gradually know God better.

We are always tempted to try different paths in life, sometimes we even choose to go solo without God. At each cul-de-sac, we gradually learn about our God. From our human point of view, God is gradually revealing himself to us.

Does God hold back to reveal himself to us? No. He is Emmanuel, always in our midst. Christmas does not leave us. But we sometimes cannot see or feel him simply because of the circumstances or situations of life that we find ourselves in. We are human which is why on that first Christmas Day he became human like us. God is active in our midst, working hard to make us see Him. He came down on Earth with the sole purpose to draw us closer to Him.

We sometimes cannot see God, like the sun hidden behind storm clouds. Maybe it is happening more these days with changing lifestyles that take us further away from any religion. It seems God must work hard to stay relevant for us. Our worldly life is dynamic, always modernising and high tech, human expressions constantly evolving to the extent that the world wants to leave God behind to progress on. We, humanity, have always done that since the Old Testament, throughout our salvation history. But He keeps coming back for us.

The world is always evolving. It must. As persons, we adjust and adapt. We try to keep up with the changes. We need to. But often we get lost. Christmas has come around once again to remind us that God accompanies us through all these changes. He is amidst these evolutions. He is not losing control. There is only one thing that never changed throughout history and that is God’s Love. It is the one constant. What changed are expressions of God and his love. Our God is never old fashioned or conservative. We must find new ways in our life, new expressions to uncover him from behind our clouds. He is waiting to be revealed.

Every sunrise brings on a new day and with it love, mercies and graces are new again. God is always in our midst. Christmas never went away. As we move anxiously on, into a new year amidst the pandemic, we remind ourselves that it all began in that humble stable in Bethlehem. Today, and tomorrow, in the here and now, it continues in the humble stable of our hearts. That is where we carry Christmas on our daily journey and that is where God will reveal himself to us. May that sun in us rise above the clouds. Merry Christmas.

Christmas 2021