Susie and I wish you the joy of family

the gift of friends this holiday season

and all the best in 2017

Lori Borgman is one of my favorite writers who brings us back to the not so fast days when we could spend time thinking of how great life is and the wonderous feelings during the holidays as opposed to all the the needless things we concern ourselves with. Here is her story this week that I love reading.

Seeing Christmas with eyes of wonder
Lori Borgman | Monday, Dec. 19, 2016

We are watching “Miracle on 34^th Street” with three of the grands, the oldest of whom is 6. She leans over and whispers, “Those two believe, but I don’t.” She casts a knowing look and has a slight upward tilt of the chin that says she’s one of us now. I nearly wonder if I should offer her some coffee and tell her where I hide good dark chocolate in the kitchen.

Sweet, but I hope she never completely loses her sense of wonder.

Nearly every Christmas morning as a child I woke up with a profound sense that the world was different. Oh, sure the chubby guy in the red suit had made a delivery (wink, wink), but that wasn’t it. It was that a baby had been born in the deep of night. I always imagined it was probably after midnight, when the all the world would be asleep, and before 5 a.m., when all the farmers would be awake.

The time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.

I knew the birth had to be something special because it was a divide in time. Our calendars said so—B.C. and A.D.—before Christ and anno Domini, the year of our Lord.

I knew it had happened long ago and far away, in a stable of sorts that was much like a barn. There had been animals about, straw no doubt, and a feeding trough.

Adults talked like it was a shame that a baby had been born in a barn, but I thought it was wonderful. My mother sometimes asked if I had been born in a barn. I wished I had. I spent many an afternoon in my Grandpa’s barn and it was a wonderful place full of light and shadow, hiding places, plank floors, wooden ladders, hay bales and nooks and crannies for momma cats and newborn kittens. It would be a marvelous place for a baby to be born, too.

My depth of understanding regarding the needs of newborns was on a par with the depth of theology. But there was a sense of wonder then that sometimes eludes me now.

My theology is deeper today and my faith mature, in part because it has been tested time and time again. Frequently, I return to that first Christmas to regroup and start again. “God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son.”

I have a good understanding of covenants, catechisms, creeds and doctrines. What I don’t understand, is where the wonder went.

What I would give to see the wonder of Christmas, once more, through the eyes of a child.

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!

PS:  The Panama Perspective is taking an editorial recess until the first of the year.