January Hope
I love January. One reason I love January is that I love Christmas. When I was a little girl growing up in Tennessee, the Christmas season was definitely over before New Year’s Day. People even said it was “bad luck” if your Christmas tree wasn’t down before the new year began. Bad luck? That’s nonsense! I respect folks who have the tradition of ending their celebrations before New Year’s Day, but for Ray and me, we’ve decided to keep our celebrations going.
As I have told you before, we keep celebrating well into January —  at least through the twelfth day of Christmas. Today is the tenth day of Christmas, by the way. We are definitely celebrating today, but not the way the folks in the song did. My true love (that’s Ray, as you know) didn’t give me ten lords a-leaping. Whew! I’m glad of that. What in the world would I do with a present like that?!
I’m happy knowing that Christmas isn’t over yet. Ray and I are still getting up in the morning and turning on the Christmas lights — what a great way to spread light when the nights are long. We haven’t quite gotten through all our favorite Christmas movies yet either, and a few Christmas cards are still trickling in, too.
I do know what it’s like to have the January blahs though. My blah-est January was definitely 2004. We moved into our wonderful, dream-come-true home late in the month. My precious daddy had died unexpectedly almost exactly a month before, just days before Christmas. Two characteristics stand out about my life in our house that January — cold and dark. My body felt it and my spirit did, too.
Just thinking about this last night made me realize how wonderful God has been to me and what He has taught me since that January. During that cold, dark January, I couldn’t see that a time would come when Christmas and January would be not cold and dark, but warm and bright for me, nor did I know that I would experience even more tragedies in the coming years and that even those tragedies could not permanently suppress the warm and bright that God would eventually give to me again.
I may sound a bit rambly today. If so, I apologize. What I want to do is to offer you hope, a hope that springs from decades of seeing God be faithful again and again no matter what happens. Let me repeat those last few words: no matter what happens.
Therefore, having been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith
into this grace in which we stand;
and we exult in hope of the glory of God.
And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations,
knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance;
and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope;
and hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Romans 5:1-5
I completely understand what you are saying here, Charlene. Just this past weekend–Jan 7–we finally took down the tree and decorations and lights. We played the Christmas music all day while we worked on that, and at bedtime, finally slipped the last CD into the Christmas music box, until next year. I love that “lingering Christmas” tradition that we have! It reminds me of a song by Matthew West. The chorus says, “Happy day after Christmas, Merry rest of the year, even when Christmas is over, the Light of the world is still here!”
What a beautiful day for your family and what a beautiful song.