It’s the week leading up to Christmas Day. The hustle and bustle is apparent; stress vividly displayed on mother’s touting their toddlers in and out of stores while carrying five bags of more needed stuff, pine trees sparkle with tinsel and homemade ornaments, the Christmas carols blast from your radio station. It truly is the “hap-happiest season of all”.
But for many it isn’t.
Last week a family lost their 18 year old son to suicide. It’s somebody else’s first Christmas without their mom or their brother or sister or grandparent. It’s someone’s first Christmas away from their family because they got deployed. It’s someone else’s first Christmas homeless. Or without a job. Or with cancer.
I don’t say these things to bring your spirits down, but rather to see the reality of people’s lives around us. The Christmas season can be the “hap-happiest season” for many, but for many that are suffering or have a void in their lives, it’s a difficult season to navigate.
Leading up to Christmas we have the winter solstice. Today is the shortest day of the year. The sun rises late and sets early. The Christ Child comes to us at the darkest time of the year, just when we need a little bit of light, the light that will illuminate our hearts and lives.
Spread that light of the Christ Child this year to a stranger, someone you know that is suffering. Give them the gift of your faith through your unending prayers and sacrifices. Visit the homeless. Serve at a soup kitchen. Visit the widow who just lost his/her spouse. Give a gift anonymously to a family that is in need. It’s not too late. It’s never too late. The smallest act of kindness is the lighted candle that will break into the darkness of those who suffer.
What Christmas gift will you give this year? Who will you share the light of Christ with this season?
1 thought on “Enter Light”
We need tons more of the realism you just delivered. During advent, I gave half our good towels and sweaters and electronics to a Catholic home for homeless women inter alia. My house is almost down to minimal and will be there soon. Was it an experience of joyful community between me and the homeless women? Heck no. I never got to see more than two. Intermediaries took everything and wanted to know if I wanted a tax statement. I had pictured me teaching the children involved ….the conga drum I gave them. Nope. A lady took it and said a worker there would teach them.
Lesson…giving is not always a communal love fest…but it will be when I meet some of those homeless women in Heaven and they say thanks for the Polo sweater that was perfectly new….it touched them in the heart…and the fluffy towel led to one attending Church for good. It’s in Heaven where unflawed community will take place. I gave through Catholic Near East Welfare for ten years to an orphan…same experience….the nun wrote the child’s letters with over sweet nun things a child would never say but later the child wrote when older and that was nice.
But then CNEW abruptly stated to me that that child was gone and they appointed me a new one…no goodbye…no last loving letter. Give…check on isolated elderly on your block…but those
loving communal perfect moments…are mostly in Heaven. You’ll check on an elderly person and they might shoot you through the door…wear a vest…level 4. But check anyway…the hungry in America have options and food stamps. The lone elderly need to be in good old age homes like a Catholic one near me..they should not be alone at all.