Sometimes, doing exactly what we want is the path to destruction. But sometimes it’s the path to joy. I don’t feel like writing a blog post today, so I will be brief.
I’m much more joyful this holiday season than I have been for a while. I’m not really sure why, but that’s how I feel.
Other people are not feeling joyful about the season and that’s okay.
Probably still more people are feeling both joyful and not joyful at the same time. Christmas is a time for family, for better or worse. It’s a time of gift-giving, which is fun and stressful and debt-inducing all at the same time. Christmas has also, bizarrely, become a source of division over how and why we celebrate or choose not to. (Mark this prediction: the current backlash in defense “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” will be discovered to be the product of Russian troll farms.)
One thing I’m certain of: joy cannot grow without a certain amount of grace, so let’s be kind to one another and, even more important, kind to ourselves. If those two are in conflict, choose yourself; you’re the only you you’ve got. (If anyone thinks that is unbiblically selfish, I will remind them that we are asked to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we cannot love ourselves, it is impossible to love our neighbor.)
Here are the two songs we sang at church on Sunday. I hope you can connect with one or both, but it’s okay if you don’t.
Merry Christmas.