Winter Solstice

Happy Winter Solstice? I mean, what do you do with that? One of my FB friends wrote that this morning and well, at first it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. This is the Christmas season! How could we have our eyes and our mind focused on anything else? Are we becoming that much of a post Christian culture?

But wait! Me thinks that makes me out to be a hypocrite for it is I just less than a week ago was a harbinger of spring to someone lamenting it was winter. It is I who look forward to the first day of spring with such anticipation and relief. It is I who start a countdown to spring right after Thanksgiving. It is I who cross off the days until that joyous 3rd week in March. In fact I now begin the celebration early – as soon as we go to daylight savings time!

How can I be so shallow in my thinking that it would be sacrilegious to say happy winter solstice? It is a season of joy for those who love winter! My errant thinking assumes that someone else might observe it as a celebration of some weather god or goddess.

I never look forward to the first day of spring as the celebration of a pagan festival. Nay! I look forward to it with assurance that the God who created the universe and who created me will usher in the seasons with such punctuality, such predictability, such dependability!

If we therefore can look at the seasons and the cycles of the moon and sun not as something to be worshipped themselves but as evidence that glorifies the One who created them, what more reason to celebrate their arrival!

It is we, mankind, who chose Dec 25 to plunk down as a time to celebrate the birth of Christ. How can we hold in contempt an act that Christ himself ordained as part of creation?

Let us celebrate even more the Word which created it all; the Word that became flesh through the birth of Jesus Christ! Happy winter solstice, happy summer solstice, happy autumnal equinox, happy vernal equinox all in the name of the One who created them!

MSG © Deu 4:19 And also carefully guard yourselves so that you don't look up into the skies and see the sun and moon and stars, all the constellations of the skies, and be seduced into worshiping and serving them. GOD set them out for everybody's benefit, everywhere.

John chapter 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. 2 The Word 4 was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc--ZYUyE2M