(This is the 5th of seventeen remaining posts in my 200 for 200 goal. If you like what I do on this blog, please tell your friends and invite them to “follow.” Your interest helps me to keep writing!)

It’s the last day of 2018. I’ve spent much of December lying low, or nose-to-the-grindstone with work, and the Christmas season flew by. This despite my saying that I would intentionally slow down and make time to really get into the mood and the idea of the season–something at which I failed dismally. I have, however, managed to take some downtime between Christmas and the New Year without work, enjoying time with friends and my wife, writing and pursuing other hobbies, and doing some reflecting on the past year and Christmas itself. I’ve read a number of excellent blog posts about Christmastime and thought, “as an aspiring theologian, I really ought to post something, too.”

But, in this strange season (for me, at least) of trying to relax and simultaneously being angsty that I’m “not being productive enough,” I just don’t have a deep intellectual theological point to make on the subject (though what I hope to be deep theological and intellectual points on some other important issues will soon be forthcoming). If there’s anything I’ve learned from trying to be “a writer” (if I’ve truly learnt anything at all), it’s that you can’t force a subject and achieve something you’re truly proud of as a result.

So, instead, I’m going to merely share some of the things that have been roaming through my head in the past few weeks in the hope that somebody somewhere finds some meaning in some part of it. Here we go:

Christmas

Christmas is a hectic time for me and K. As a worker in church ministry, this is K’s
“busy season” (to borrow an accountant’s term); she affectionately calls Christmas Eve a “non-stop Jesus party”–I believe our church held four different services this year.

On top of that, we are blessed that all of our parents live within close proximity. Of course, that also means that we have three Christmasses to make between Christmas Eve and Christmas day, which typically means less-time-than-desired spent with each family member, more road-time than we’d prefer, and a level of exhaustion at the end of things that makes it more difficult to enjoy what a blessing it is to be able to spend time with family in this part of the year.

As is appropriate, I suppose, this has me thinking about the Incarnation. The meaning of Christmas, to me, is relatively simple but profound. God loves us so much that God personally came to Earth to be with us, accepting suffering alongside us (and for us) just to be present with us. It’s one thing to write that, but let it really sink in. Think about what God volunteered to do when no force or power can make God do anything God doesn’t will to do. Think about the eternal profundity of that choice. I’m not often one to let my emotions get the best of me, but this single thought strikes me to the core every time I contemplate it.

This basic truth about God’s will, choices and desire for us is the source of all hope we have, the foundation of that peace which cannot be marred by temporal events, the all-encompassing love that inspires love in all touched by it. Jesus Christ’s birth into the world is the very core element of Christianity (as is fitting).

Yes, Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross for us is also foundational, as is the Resurrection. But, at the end of the day, these are true mysteries of the faith that we will never fully understand. Whether you ascribe to Christus Victor theory, Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory, or one of the various other proffered explanations for the mechanism of our salvation, it’s a topic that will always elude our complete grasp. But the meaning of Christmas needs no great intellect for one to understand how it changes everything. The meaning of Christmas is existential, and therefore intuitive.

We may cloud that realization with commercialization, with stress about pleasing others and properly performing traditions, or angst about failing to adequately take time to “get into the Christmas Spirit,” but it is always there for us, waiting to be discovered anew.

New Year’s Resolutions

I haven’t made New Year’s Resolutions for several years. It strikes me as a silly thing, really. Why should an arbitrary marker of time provide some special impetus for us achieving the things we want to all year round (but fail to summon the discipline or will to truly work toward)? I want to be in better shape all the time, but there’s no reason to think that I will have some additional amount of drive to follow through on the desire tomorrow than I do today.

Instead, I’ve simply made goals for myself for each season of my life, reflecting on and thinking about those things that I want to prioritize for myself in the choices that I make moving forward.

But this year, I’ve decided to make a resolution anyway. It is, in many ways, a sub-goal for my life season goals. At present, the life goal on which I am most focused is to become a professional writer, to be published. That doesn’t mean that I expect to be able to be a full-time writer, I understand how rare a thing that that actually is, and there’s a part of me that would very much like to keep money out of my writing as much as possible (though I understand what the Apothecary means when he says, “My poverty but not my will consents.”).

That resolution is to write for at least one hour every day. It’s not necessarily about content generation (as I said above, such things cannot be forced). Instead, it’s about building stronger writing habits. I may write on the novel I’m working on, or the half-finished theology book manuscript currently gathering dust, or a short-story, or something gaming-related, or this blog, or what ultimately amounts to unusable nonsense. The point is to erode those barriers that all-too-commonly lead me to say, “I feel like I should be writing right now, but…” To write for the sake of writing, because I acknowledge that as a core personal need I have–writing, regardless of result or achievement, is part of who I am.

Maybe while I’m at it, I’ll get myself to the gym more often. But I’m not holding my breath.