Christmas is the great gift of goodness to a world looking for hope and fulfilment. The New Year that follows, seven days later, brings with it the opportunity to see just how a thing like that all works out.
Who would have correctly guessed what the year 2020 was going to drag along with it when we were all enjoying Christmas 2019? I heard a fellow say the other day that, “Just about the time I have learned the way to live – life changes.” Indeed, it does.
Over the past four-score years, I’ve come to believe that Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are! That’s just the way it is. Christmas, however, is still delivering the gift of goodness to a world looking for hope and fulfilment. That shan’t change!
Too many of my fellow sojourners traveling along the freeways of this culture, take personal consolation in the notion that they are basically the victims of what is happening to them. They find themselves experiencing breakdown of basic law and order in the largest and most sophisticated cities. Physical terrorist attacks like the 9/11 tragedy, as well as electronic cyber-attacks on our financial and national defense institutions are growing realities. A weird pandemic with strange characteristics, and even stranger origins, has killed and sickened hundreds of thousands of our neighbors and left millions of job holders and small business-owners bankrupt. They all watch as traditional political and economic structures begin to falter and collapse into chaos.
Wow! What a perfect time for Christmas – just when the great gift of goodness is being offered to a world desperately looking for hope and fulfillment!
I once heard Dennis Prager tell an audience here in Denver that, “Goodness is about character, integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people.”
In my opinion, there is nothing in the world stronger than the gift of goodness, that has been given to us by a loving God, with the expectation that we will freely share that awesome gift with every other person in this needy world. If you accept the gift, then keep it to yourself, it will always be little. If you accept the gift and make it about other people by lavishly giving it away to everyone you know, it will grow, and return in exponential measure.
For my Christmas gift to you this year, I would like to help us expand the horizon of our spiritual and behavioral possibilities for goodness in this coming year of 2021.
I would like to challenge us – me included – to commit to answering this simple question:
What accomplishment of goodness would you dare to pursue
this next year, if you were assured you would not fail?
I would invite you to let me know just how this all works out during 2021.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!