The light from the low-hanging clouds is gray at best. The ground is sodden from the seemingly continual dripping of rain, and the air is chilly and damp.

A far cry from a few weeks ago when we were in the height of the holiday season. Two months of bright colors, tantalizing food, beautiful music and high expectations came crashing to a close on January 2nd and the new year began in earnest. Now there's no holiday in sight until May and life couldn't be more ordinary. No decorations, no Christmas cookies and candies, no carols - this is indeed the "bleak mid winter."

This is always the hardest time of year for me, perhaps because I enjoy Christmas so much. Every year I'm hit with the reality of reality, right in the face. (If that's not you, I'm sorry to drag you into my misery.)

But just imagine if there were no miraculous birth to celebrate. Then all of life would be like this mid-winter stretch from January to springtime. Life would be nothing but work and bills and ... what? Certainly not the truth we know that there came One in the midst of the drabness and despair of the human condition to raise us above it.

Maybe Christmas is a gift to make us think how all of life should really be - impregnated with the Presence of the Holy One. Oh, it's not the tree or the cards or the lights or the food - it's Jesus. Christmas is a kind of earnest, a light in the darkness, to let us know that He makes all of life to shine.

Shine on me, Light of the World.

He is come, He is here, He has promised to never leave us or forsake us. Seasons come and seasons go, but the Faithful One is with us forever.