Moving on too fast

Christmas is over and the countdown celebrations to welcome the New Year have ended. Indeed, the world wants to 'move on' to the next thing. At the mall yesterday, the decorations were coming up for the next big event: Chinese New Year. It seems that the world just wants to move from one major event to the next, never giving ourselves time to absorb the significance of each event and to live with it for a while. The wheel of life just keeps turning, too fast for me most of the time.

It is a relief that the Christian world has a mandate to 'remember'. I enjoy the liturgical readings because I am reminded that the Christmas season is not over. This is the week before Epiphany which falls on Sunday 6 January. And there will be another week after Epiphany before the readings move into 'ordinary time'. This is a time when, after the joyful celebration of our Lord's birth, I find it appropriate to dwell more deeply on what the incarnation means. The second person of the Trinity took on flesh to show us the 'human' face of God. What does this all mean in my daily life? Theology is not meant to stay in the head....but to unpack the mystery of the incarnation will take far longer than unwrapping our Christmas gifts.

So we move on...into 2008 and the hopes, the plans, the challenges. But at another level, we may need to 'stay' in our hearts at the place where we are being drawn by our Lord. Even in spirituality we want to move on to the next interesting thing. I have been hearing the word "wait" many times the past couple of weeks, from different people. God must think I am 'dense' (he is right: actually it is stubbornness) and need to be reminded. The world tempts by its many choices, all of course good things. It is true discernment to prayerfully weigh each choice in the light of the call to "wait". I don't think I will be just sitting and doing nothing this year. But I know that whatever choices I make need to be held loosely, with open hands, giving the Lord liberty to remove if he so chooses.