A Baby chnages everything...

...The title of a Faith Hill song. Being a song title does not make it true but any parent knows a baby changes everything. Recently a family in our congregation added a third child a little girl born on the 5^th of December. She is a precious addition to their family of 4. But her little-bitty-self will change everything that family does forever. Her older siblings are in middle school and elementary school now there are diapers and feedings, small toys that get under the bridge of your foot before you step on them (did I mention with sharp edges). Yep that baby will change everything. Christmas does that too, it changes everything all because of a baby. Life changes dramatically in most homes at Christmas time.

My own for example gets cleaned from head to toe and then comes the decorations. If it sits it’s decorated. That is my secret keep moving or I will be decorated. The whole house and everyone and everything is transformed by greenery, glitter, lights or tinsel most of the time all of the aforementioned. Outside lights are hung and strung from anything that will support them. Inflatable snowmen are enlarged with a push of air and sway in the breeze dangling joy and peace from their bulbous arms. It is probably much like your home. I think it is like most homes. It’s true a baby changes everything.

We change too at Christmas. The schedule makes you change adding parties and gatherings each week and by the last week a party each day. There are gifts to be given so decisions must be made as to what and “can I afford it.” The pace picks up dramatically. So does our spirits. Strangers wish complete strangers Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Lips that most days are shaped in a frown now have a curvature more vertical in nature or a hint of one at the edges waiting in anticipation for an opportunity to bust into sight of one and all. There is a glad tone to the despondent and sorrowful voice for most. Hope blows in the wind in greater concentrations than dust in the summer and for many they look forward to getting together with family and spending time in the same room. Yes, Virginia a baby changes everything.

THIS baby changes everything, he was supposed to. Right now the transformation is impossible not to see and experience. We have a fire in our fireplace at Christmas. The rest of the year the fireplace consumes space. This baby, Jesus came to change not the physical world but the world of the physical from the inside out. He came to change our perspective on life and living from getting to giving, from trial to transformation, from impossible situations to great opportunities and from existing to living, really living. Live it up this Christmas (the end of the world didn’t happen 12.21.12 as the Mayans never predicted) because THIS baby changed everything!

Merry Christmas from my family to yours!             

The Rev