Month: December 2014

Person of the Year

CBC Radio had its weekly Cross Country Checkup phone-in show today, asking people their candidate for Person of the Year. There were lots of worthy (and predictable) suggestions.

I have a slightly different nomination, for person of the coming year: You. Whatever has gone down or failed to happen for you in the past, what’s coming can be a time of promise and hope. In spite of how we may feel, you and I have the capacity to make a difference, with one catch: we have to be willing to be changed and filled by and with the love and power beyond ourselves.

The Apostle Paul put it radically: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

White Christmas

It looks like it’s going to be a foggy, soggy Christmas here in southern Ontario–certainly disappointing for those hoping for a White Christmas, with softly falling sinow flakes having just the right consistency for snow persons.

A White Christmas is one of the ways we want everything to be ‘just right’ at Christmas time, even while we know it is a time that accentuates everything, good or bad. It makes me wonder if it is the mere turning of the year that follows that leads us to make new year resolutions. Maybe this urge comes also out of a time of wanting everything to be ‘just right’–or as close to it as possible. So we resolve to make life better in some way.

That’s a good thing. Let’s go for it. Ultimately, though, we will want to remember that our true peace does not depend on circumstances, saying, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances” (Philippians 4:11).