By Rev. Barbara Zimmerman
When I was a child, I had a swing made of two ropes and a board suspended from the cross beam holding a network of clotheslines in the yard behind our farm house.
That swing was my favourite place to be (except on Mondays when I risked getting caught up in damp bed sheets or my brother’s ‘barn’ jeans).
But there – and only there – I was a trapeze artist (who wondered how storybook kids ever actually mustered the courage to run away and join the circus).
I was a bird (who could soar with the likes of Jonathan Livingston Seagull).
I could float. I could fly. I could defy gravity. But best of all, I could exist, for about one second, in that amazing and precious moment of the threshold between up-swing and swoop. Oh the wonder of it! I would catch my breath and just be there.
I pray that everyone will experience something akin to that breathless wonder in this pre-Christmas season, in spite of pandemic fears and health ministry restrictions.
We are on the threshold of something amazing, and precious; and even though we may seem to be hurrying about, when we allow our hearts to remember the reason for the holiday– even for a second – we catch our breath in anticipation of the holy moment when we will know again the birth of our Savour.
As we go around town, we see crèche scenes displayed on lawns and in buildings.
Have you noticed? The figures in the crèche all stop and stare, caught up in that precious and amazing moment of seeing the newborn Christ; caught (for more than just one second) in the wonder of it!
They seem to be saying, “I want to just be in this amazing moment forever!”
It is my constant prayer in this season that everyone will have a wonder-filled holiday season. May you ‘be’ there!