Stop. Breathe. Remember.

It’s so easy to get all wrapped up in the Christmas season and miss the message. Especially with so few days until the big event and I have yet to finish the baking and cleaning and shopping and cooking and washing of windows that haven’t been touched since the Fourth of July.

But company’s coming.

Shouldn’t I be busy getting ready? Shouldn’t I be planning better, bigger, more?

Last night I stepped outside and looked to the ridge above Cañon City. There shone the giant star lit each year for the season. Lesser beams spotlighted a small nativity, and farther down the ridge, three travelers.

In spite of my hurry and worry that star simply shines. And that’s what I need to top my Christmas agenda — a simple reminder of a simple child who brought hope and light to harried people everywhere.

Stop. Breathe. Remember.

For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.

—Matthew 2:2 NKJV

Out of Control

A small natural disaster created a major inconvenience here the other day. On national radar it was a blip; locally it was a rockslide.

Literally.

Seven thousand tons of rock slipped off the mountain and across U.S. Highway 50 like a string of broken beads. The 20-foot swath closed the two-lane road west of Canon City for nearly a week. Commuters, tourists and delivery trucks had to reroute more than 100 miles out of their way.

Twenty feet doesn’t seem like much, roughly the length of a modern living room. But when individual boulders are themselves 20 feet across, there’s no getting around the issue.

Road crews broke, blasted and drilled the boulders into more manageable pieces before loading them into trucks. Three hundred truck loads, by the way, to clear the main artery that flows through Colorado’s Arkansas River canyon.

It doesn’t take much to stop our forward progress: a big rock, downsizing, a disabled refrigerator, a disabling illness, rumors of war, death.

How startling to discover that we are not in control.

How dare those rocks slide into our path. How dare our boss fire us. How dare we get sick now, when we’re so busy.

How dare the carefully threaded beads of my life come tumbling down around my feet and roll away.

And how glad I am - truly - that it’s not all up to me after all.


“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (I Peter 5:7).