Heart to Heart

In The Mood of Christmas, Howard Thurman writes, “This is the season of Christmas. For many people, in many places, it is a time of great pressure and activity, a time when nerves are tense, and when a great deal of anxiety hovers over the common life. And this is just the reversal of what the mood and the meaning of Christ really are.”

Then, he suggests that those of you who care deeply about the meaning of your own lives do two things during this season. This Christmas, I encourage you to do the second thing.

Thurman invites us to do what he calls a simple thing: “Will you with your imagination, with your fancy, will you conjure up into your minds a gift of grace that you might give to someone for whom you have no obligation, someone whose need is not so great that if you don’t respond to it during this season you will feel guilty – but someone upon whom you might confer a private blessing. It may be just to pick up the telephone and call someone whose life is not tied to yours in any way, but someone about whom you know something and with this knowledge as a background you say a word of reassurance, of comfort, of delight, of satisfaction – so that you will feel that out of the fullness of your own heart, you have conferred upon some unsuspecting human being a gentle grace that makes the season a good and whole and hale and happy time.”

Pastor Lynn Westover