The Twelfth Day: Where is the Child?

"Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? "

 - From Matthew 2

It is the Twelfth Day. Now is the time to say . . . "We made it."

If you have been following the Twelve Day Journey, then perhaps by now you have a sense of the length of time that it takes. Twelve days is a long time. We're well into January, and 2018!

But for the Wise Men from the East, it was a journey that took weeks, even months. 

When you present a nativity play on Christmas Eve, with a role for the Wise Men, you have cut the narrative way short. You get no sense at all, of the passage of time. You lose the sense that, once the baby has been born . . . it is time to seek the baby, even if it takes days . . . weeks . . . months . . . a lifetime.

Twelve Days seems a perfect length of time to practice seeking. Advent for waiting. Christmas for seeking. And tomorrow, the Epiphany, for finding.

It is a perfect length, because so few people last this long. The Christmas Eve service, just passed, in which I participated as the "Frankincense King," now seems a long time ago. I caught and got over a flu since then. 

When Columbus made his first voyage across the Atlantic, there was constant pressure, for weeks, to turn around .There they were in the middle of nowhere, in the most terrifying conditions his sea-hardened men had ever faced. Yet their visionary leader gave the order to continue. But one day a bird appeared. And then a few days later, some wood, or bark, or grass, began to show up on the water's surface. And then eventually, land. Journeys are always attended with the words "Are we there yet?" 

The true spirit of Christmas past, present, and future, is to make it a journey. And to keep moving forward, and to keep asking: "Where is the child?"

I am going to break protocol now and speak directly to the reader. 

My first Twelve Days blog post this year had over 50 views. With each successive post, the readership dropped by a dozen or so. My most recent one had only eleven views, which is about average in this blog, when I do not link it to my Twelve Days Facebook page. I've clearly been droning on too much, and have not written much of interest. 

2018 is the bicentennial of the beautiful carol: Silent Night. This milestone needs to be recognized and celebrated this year. It's going to take all year. Three points:

1. I am volunteering my time and talents to make our Silent Night celebration worthy and momentous. Let Christmas Eve 2018 truly be a "silent night," globally. In the World Wars, as allied and axis troops stopped shelling each other on Christmas Eve, while all joined in singing the classic hymn, let war cease, at least for a few moments, this December 24th.
2. I'm asking my readers, of the blog and of the Facebook groups, to help out by sharing some of your reflections of Christmas 2017. Please share three things that were great, in your Christmas this year, and then share something you want to do more of, or differently, next year. Let's start the year off with some dialogue. 
3. On the 5th, and 25th, of every month this year, starting January 25, I am going to set aside time for prayer and planning, for our 2018 Silent Night and a truer, deeper Christmas experience next year, one that . . . as the song says, will last the whole year through. 

Where is the Child?

Merry Christmas, Everybody!