Christmas Eve footnote
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Apropos of Advent and Christmas, I received an email from the curate at our church, Dane Boston, today:
Christmas becomes such a soggy, saccharine, sentimental mess if it is not accompanied with a serious, sober look at ourselves and our world.
I’ve been thinking lately about the first line of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, of all things: “Marley was dead: to begin with…This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” Gently tweaked, I think that’s the preface to the Christmas Gospel: “We were dead: to begin with.” Only when we’ve got that down does the wonderful story of Life incarnate coming to our world of death have any real meaning.
Isn’t that wonderful? (See Ephesians 2:4-5).
