It is always our hope on Christmas that there will be joy, cheer, peace and goodwill – and after Christmas Day some kind of “reality” sets in and things just aren’t much better. Same headlines and outside same weather as well.

It was only in the eighteenth century that New Year’s Day came on January First. Before then it came in March, closer to Easter, and that, for us human beings, seems to make more sense. There is that sense of new life in the fields, forests and in us as well. Something then is afoot and we can feel all the possibilities of what is new.  In is harder in December than in April to go back from the altar to our work with a feeling that we have really been changed.  The world will not and does not change, though unless we have changed – and we are called by our loving God to change - no matter what the weather is.

The answer in all this is that Christ has hallowed all we do, and in every place that we are. By his grace the world isn’t the same, and neither are we.  So we do begin again, that in leaving the manger we may embrace the world for his sake and for ours as well and are blessed as we tend to our lives in God’s kingdom.