on the walk

I was in a conversation recently where many of us were bemoaning that we just weren’t in the “Christmas spirit.” I often find myself feeling this way at Christmas. I have no good excuses. I can’t use the “it’s just so busy” excuse, because December usually isn’t a particularly busy month for me. I can’t use the “everything is so commercialized” excuse, because I have no trouble getting into the spirit of summer vacation even in Ocean City where everything is commercialized.

For me there is one reason, I have not taken the time to live out compassion for others. The whole Christmas story is this, out of compassion for us, the son of God took on flesh and came to earth for my sake. The “spirit of Christmas” is not some vague disembodied warm happy feeling of goodwill to all. It is precisely an embodied spirit. It is an enfleshed spirit of compassion for others. A vague happy sense of brotherly love may be popular this time of year, but it is not the spirit of Christmas.

My friend Alex Lozada wrote this on his blog tonight. The Post was titled “Bell-Ringing for the Salvation Army.”

My first day was the coldest, but every time my fingers started to ache, I thought “I’m going back to a warm house, but there are homeless people who would die tonight if it weren’t for the Salvation Army’s shelters.”

A van from a elderly assisted living home dropped off residents for their Christmas shopping. They gave their dollar or coins. I thought about the widow’s coins from Luke 21.

I think Alex has the Christmas spirit.  It isn’t fancy.  It is just (extra)ordinary, compassion that is lived out in concrete ways.

on the walk

-Ethan