Well, here we are again.
Time has a way scrunching everything up, and here we are again, at that time on the yearly cycle that is so special to so many of us.
Isn’t it wonderful?
I’m going to keep this short and sweet. No long sermons, no long messages. I think the message of this special time need not come from me. It’s what we’re feeling in our hearts that counts today, and nobody needs to tell us what those feelings are.
So I thought I’d make just a few gentle observations, if you will permit, and let it go at that—allowing this delicious time we are in to speak to each of us as it will. As it always has, each year at this moment.
Not the celebration of the birth of the savior, but the celebration of the birth of the savior.
Let me explain.
The Christmas celebration itself has gotten so big, so almost out of hand, that it seems that a lot of different people have a lot of different ideas about what it’s all about.
One thing that I know it’s not about, for me, is a doctrine or a dogma. It’s about celebrating the birth of Christ, for sure, because that is a cause for celebration, but it’s not about, for me, the birth of a religion or a theology.
It’s about the birth of the savior, for sure, but only if the savior is born during this time.
There was a savior born, in a manger, so we are told, many, many years ago. But here is something that we have not often been told…
…there has been a savior born every night, and every day, and every minute somewhere on this planet, from the beginning.
That’s my thought about it, anyway. And I place it before you today as a possible consideration, as an idea. Nothing more.
What if each of us was intended to be a savior? What if we all were? What if every time someone is born, a savior is born? The only question then would be, whether we know it or not…
There is something we are celebrating now, and it feels to me like it’s larger than any one person or any one religion or any one spiritual doctrine.
There’s a feeling that millions of people experience—they experience it in common and they experience it together. And boy, I’m sorry if this sounds naïve, or even sappy, but I think that feeling can be put into one word: LOVE.
Now if Love really is what we are celebrating, it will not matter what kind of package it comes in, what kind of dogma it’s wrapped in, or what kind of doctrine it’s flavored with. It would only matter whether it was real and true, and present, here and now—in our lives and in our world.
And there is one way to guarantee that it is. By putting it there.
It is, in the end, up to us.
If we want humanity to receive the true gift of Christmas, and to have it last the whole year through, we have to agree to become, each of us in our own way, the savior.
I realized this morning as I was thinking about this that nothing that is going on during this special time will have any meaning until I give it meaning in my own life, and in the lives of others. We’re living in a world right now that is not the kind of world we would choose, if we thought we had a choice.
Here is the news on this day. It is the news that Christ came to tell us.
We do.
We do have a choice.
All of us do, and if we will give ourselves permission to see it that way, and to see ourselves that way—as the person making the choice, as the person modeling the choice, as the person sharing the choice, we can save the day for humanity. The savior can be born right now, today, when we allow love unconditional to be born again in our hearts.
I got something in my email the other day, and I want to share it with you. It’s perfect for this time of year, because it reveals to us just how easy it is to love, just how easy it is to be an individual savior in a world that’s begging to be saved, person by person, moment by moment.
This is a story which comes to us from a woman who, many years ago, worked as a volunteer at a hospital. She got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease.
Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.
The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. The boy hesitated for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Yes, I’ll do it if it will save her.”
As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks.
Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away?”
You see, being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.
What we’re talking about here is love. Plain and simple, short and sweet. We’re talking about love.
Love can be sent to others in a thousand ways. Even thoughts of love can change things. They can be felt. Be you, and by the person you are thinking of, too.
Yes, they can.
You can literally “send love to another” with the power of your thought. In fact, you have a chance to do that right now. If you think of someone with love in this moment, whether they are in their body or have left their earthly body, it will not matter. They will feel it.
And this is how it begins. Through simple acts such as this. I promise you. The love for another that you ignite in your heart is ignited in the heart of the other. The light may be dim at first, but it will never go out. It cannot, as long as you keep placing it there.
That was the message of the man whose birth we celebrate now. And, as I said, you don’t need me to tell you that. But I need you. I have not done so good in this love department in my life. I would have liked to do better. I wish I could be more loving. So here’s the gift you can give tonight. Help me be that. And, for that matter, help everyone whose life you touch.
Do it by loving them, simply, plainly, openly, without condition. Return them to themselves. If you’ll give me back to myself, maybe I can do better.
You’re my only hope. You’ve got to see me as I have stopped seeing myself. You’ve got to see in me what I, myself, have lost sight of. That’s when you give me the unspeakable gift. That’s the treasure of treasures.
I’ll try my very best to give it to you. I know you’ll try to give it to me. Let’s give it to each other, and to all people everywhere. Then, the savior is born….in us.
And then we can bring, we can truly bring, Joy to the World.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
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