Christmas Ghosts

Second Wednesday of Advent

Originally posted Friday, December 11, 2009

I went to a production of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” at the Dallas Theater Center. It’s a wonderful presentation of the classic tale with a flawless cast, imaginative set design, musical numbers sparingly used at just the right moments, and heart-pounding special effects. But still, it’s the story and words that touched me most.

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One True Light

Second Tuesday of Advent

Forty years ago today, John Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment building in Manhattan. It was a shocking event that took the life of a young husband and father of just 40 years old and changed the course of music history. I was 21 at the time, and for many in my generation and older, it was a “day the music died” along the lines of that day in 1959 when Buddy Holly died.

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In Whatever Season

Second Monday of Advent

Originally posted Thursday, March 5, 2015 – DURING LENT

It’s interesting the way we’ve boxed Advent and Christmas into wintertime and Lent and Easter into spring. It seems we want our Jesus to be born on a dark cold night and to rise on a bright warm day; to come into this world under the harshest of human conditions, and to return in an explosion of heavenly glory. But the weather doesn’t always cooperate. Here in North Texas, it was relatively mild during Advent; not once did it dip below freezing, and we enjoyed many days in the 60s. And today, on the 16th day of Lent, it is 25 degrees with four inches of snow and ice on the ground. We’re supposed to be walking through the quiet, thoughtful, prayerful days of Lent, but we just finished an invigorating trudge to the city park, ankle deep in snow, where families were sledding under a clear, sunny sky. We came home and LeAnn made a snowman, while I went inside to work on taxes.

It’s all mixed up, and that’s OK, because Christmas and Easter don’t belong to a season. They belong to the heart – in whatever season the heart is in.