Seasons

We used to have a short Halloween season, a nice slow-paced Thanksgiving, and then around mid-November we'd see Christmas stuff out for sale. Well, now these three events are getting mashed together in what one author calls a "HalloweenthanksgivingChristmaspalooza."

Ellyn von Huben notes, "I've noticed that so much of society's sense of holiday celebrations has been condensed that it is hard to even see what holiday we are headed toward."

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story (and her wonderful new word to describe this season) provides a great way to help your congregation slow down, take a deep breath, and focus on Christ and the true meaning of Advent, which Von Huben defines at "The time in which we prepare our hearts for the celebration of Our Lord made flesh to dwell among us."

Debates about acceptable holiday greetings occasionally roil American retail stores and cable news shows. But when it comes to cards, most people prefer “Merry Christmas.” According to an industry survey, Americans send about 1.6 billion Christmas cards every year, and 53 percent carry the traditional religious greeting. “Happy Holidays” ranks second in card choice, and the more generic “Season’s Greetings” comes fourth after “other.”

The Christmas card tradition has proved surprisingly durable. It dates back to the Victorian era, when the celebration of Christmas was transformed into a family-centered commercial holiday. Queen Victoria started sending Christmas cards in the 1880s. Calvin Coolidge sent the first one from the White House about 40 years later.

The tradition sagged a little in the 21st century with the rise of social media; especially Facebook. But then Millennials revived the tradition as a way to add a personal connection to holiday celebrations. Card-sending households mail, on average, about 30 cards, and most people prefer pictures of kids and an old-fashioned “Merry Christmas.”

Preferred Christmas Card Greetings:

Merry Christmas 53%

Happy Holidays 21%

Season’s Greetings 12%

Other Messages 14%

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even amid today’s growing secularism, people are drawn to the joy and hope that the traditional “Merry Christmas” greeting brings. It is a constant witness to the birth of the hope of the world.

Singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken writes:

We’ve been shopping for a new home. It’s tiring and exciting, a roller coaster of emotion for all of us. My young son, for example, is sentimental about every tiny imperfection in our 90-year-old house. I tell him, “It’s time for a new season.” But looking into his eyes, I feel as though I’m looking into a mirror. I was change averse, too, when I was young. I still feel small sometimes. And in moments like this, I don’t want to let out the sails. I’d rather stay put.

The sooner we make peace with the fact that we are on a journey of perpetual change, the sooner we can move in close to the God who is unchangeable. His constancy proves him over and again to be our one steady hope.

Creation itself offers us a hopeful picture of change. We welcome change each quarter in the renewal of the seasons, each transition appealing to our senses. Scripture is full of God’s faithful refrains about hope—rather than fear—in the midst of change: “Lord, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress” (Isa. 33:2).

In line with the humility of the earth, we have the opportunity to start over with every sunrise. We open ourselves to God’s greater redemption as we see that “he has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecc. 3:11). Letting go of our old ways is an act of humility, trusting that when a tree is carefully pruned, it bears more fruit than before.

In an article for Leadership Weekly, Marshall Shelley wrote:

My wife's father is a Kansas farmer. He's spent a lifetime raising wheat, corn, milo, beef, and along the way some sheep and chickens. One morning while I followed him around the farm, we talked about the differences between city living and a rural lifestyle.

"Most city folks I know expect each year to be better than the last," he said. "They think it's normal to get an annual raise, to earn more this year than you did last year. As a farmer, I have good years and bad years. It all depends on rain at the right time, dry days for harvest, and no damaging storms. Some years we have more; some years we have less."

It was one of those indelible moments of stunning clarity. And that "law of the harvest"—some years being fat and others being lean—applies to much more than agriculture. Growing in spiritual maturity requires gratefully accepting the "seasons of more" and the "seasons of less" that God weaves into specific areas of our lives—our friendships, marriage, career, finances, ministry, and spiritual growth.

Like most couples preparing for a wedding, Dave Best and his fiancée were probably worried about whether or not everyone would show up on time for the ceremony on July 6, 2008. They didn't need to worry about their friend Dave Barclay, though. He was so excited about the wedding that he showed up a year early!

When Dave Best wrote Barclay, telling him about the July 6 wedding in Wales, Barclay assumed Best meant July 6, 2007. So Barclay bought a plane ticket from Toronto for $1,000. Once he arrived in Wales, he called Best to get a few details about the location of the venue for the ceremony. It was only then that Barclay discovered he was a bit ahead of schedule.

After a year, Barclay gave it another try. He said, "At least it assured me a mention in the wedding speech."

Author and pastor Greg Laurie offers the following advice about determining whether or not you are growing old:

• You know you're getting old when you actually look forward to a dull evening at home.

• You know you're getting old when your mind makes commitments your body cannot keep.

• You know you're getting old when everything hurts, and what doesn't hurt doesn't work.

• You know you're getting old when you sink your teeth into a big, juicy steak—and they stay there.

• You know you're getting old when you dim the lights for economic reasons, not romantic ones.

• You know you're getting old when you've owned clothes for so long they've come back into style twice.

• You know you're getting old when you sing along to elevator music.

• You know you're getting old when you quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks in the room.

In Nouwen Then, author Luci Shaw writes:

I'm an impatient, restless person. Slowing down and waiting seem like a waste of time. Yet waiting seems to be an inevitable part of the human condition.

Henri Nouwen said, "Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting."

Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Romans 8:22-25 resonates with Nouwen: "Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting" (The Message).

During a time of waiting, God is vibrantly at work within us.

Most people know of Rosa Parks as the black woman who refused to go to the back of the bus, and thus ignited the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, a boycott that became a key victory in the civil rights movement. While Park's decision appears to be a spur-of-the-moment act, it was anything but that.

Parks had spent the previous 12 years helping lead the local NAACP chapter. The summer before, she had attended a 10-day training session in Tennessee at a labor and civil rights organizing school. For some time, she had been studying other bus boycotts, and she had already been arrested in one, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, two years earlier.

This Thanksgiving I'm thankful ... That there aren't twice as many Congressman and half as many doctors. That grass doesn't grow through snow, necessitating winter mowing as well as shoveling. That there are only twenty-four hours available each day for TV programming. That civil servants aren't less civil. That teenagers ultimately will have children who will become teenagers. That I'm not a turkey. That houses still cost more than cars. That the space available for messages on T-shirts and bumpers is limited. That liberated women whose husbands take them for granted don't all scream at the same time. That snow covers the unraked leaves. That hugs and kisses don't add weight or cause cancer. That record players and radios and TV sets and washers and mixers and lights can be turned off. That no one can turn off the moon and stars.