For the Love of Christ

This time of season brings about great memories, emotions and reliosity as we rush around, buying things that our loved ones don't really need and regift if they're still in good enough shape, but I cling to the few things that help me retain my faith and beliefs in why I try to live my life the way I do. I missed (due to being terribly ill since Thanksgiving) my hometown's sing-along Messiah. One of my friends went and loved it, which sparked the desire in me to find a decent priced, good quality recording of G.F. Handel's 1742 masterwork. Hauntingly beautiful, this two-hour baroque opus written for the English king brings home the majesty and mystery of Jesus's birth. Nowhere a literalist and often skeptical, I read my gospels, especially around this time of year to return not to the history but the story; how two societal outcasts traveled several hundred miles to complete something neither of them wished to begin in the first place. A young, scared teenage mother-to-be, scared that she wasn't worthy of God's wish and terrified of how she's be viewed by her family and peers; a group of subjugated people moved around like livestock for the whim of an oppressive government and finally the birth of a new person in the lowliest of conditions, of which, serve metaphorically as the message for every person who attempts to seek an answer of "where do I fit in?". As Jesus, the historical or the one tied to the gospels experienced, heaven is at your feet and the people of God are before you. It is how you treat them as you live your life that determines in so many ways your own peace as you walk through life. And yet to hear such majestic, BIG music makes my belief in God big; like the cathedrals of Europe (and some like-minded younger ones in the U.S.), God feels big when made to worship in the presence of large things. Handel's Messiah was written to make that gospel story much larger than the actual details. What helps me make sense of my own life is when I take the BIG of the baroque and marry it with the humbleness of my beliefs of Jesus the man frequenting the slums of cities, the down and out of society or the common people of his city do I feel that I understand where the peace of my life exists. It is to put those two mutually exclusive thoughts together which keeps me living in order to find a sense of understanding and awe about why I'm here and what I'm doing here. Merry Christmas and regardless of your religious denomination or affiliation, may peace be with you this season.