by Rev. Scott Summerville

What is on your mind this morning? Dinner plans, chores, making your travel plans? What concerns you at this moment?

The weather?
Keeping peace in the family?
Getting over a cold?

What is it that fills your mind these days? What are worrying about, brooding over? What are your neurons working on these days?

One thing I’ve been thinking about quite a bit these days is Kohl’s Department Store. You see, they keep sending me notices promising me 15%, 20%, even 30% off my purchases. The problem is that there’s nothing that I really need. But I feel that I should be taking advantage of this opportunity.

Once upon a time, you went to the store because you needed something, and the store was a place you went to buy the things that you knew that you needed. That is no longer the case. A store is where you are enticed to go to figure out what you want. It’s not a matter of wanting something; instead you are simply wanting, constantly asking whether there is something you must need or would really like to have, even though you don’t know what it is. The store gets into our heads – teases our brain cells into thinking – “MUST GO TO KOHL’S! – must go to Kohls!” This is surely the triumph of marketing!

It would not matter much what sort of nonsense is floating around in our heads, except that we only have so many things we can think about, and we only have so much time, so it does matter that the things to which we devote our thoughts, our mental energy, be things that in fact are important and do matter.

When our children were little, they used to occasionally come out with the most astounding statements. Sometimes we wrote them down so we would not forget them. Eventually we made a book and had them draw pictures to go with the things they had said. We gave the book as a gift to grandma and grandpa.

There was the time our daughter was just learning to ride a two wheel bike. She was practicing on an asphalt parking lot, and on her first try she zoomed off and crashed. My heart stopped and I ran over to see if she was injured. Before I could get to her, she jumped up off the ground and said, “Tell me what a good job I did and I’ll do it better next time!” What a spirit! Sometimes we recall that scene in our family when someone needs encouragement: Just tell me what a good job I did and I’ll do better next time!

Then there was the time our son, at the age of five or so, declared, “When you close your eyes, your mind can hold things larger than itself.” In this Christmas week I invite you to hold something very large in your mind.

At our church’s family retreat last month we were invited to picture our galaxy – the Milky Way – a swirling cloud of billions of stars, whirling through space – in the center there are dense clusters of stars – and somewhere way out from the center, on one of those spiraling arms, there is a dot of light that is our sun – and around that sun the planets – and among the planets is this earth. We were invited to hold the earth in our minds – to behold the earth.

When Christ was born the angels announced peace on earth, and when the story of Jesus was told from the earliest times, the messengers spread the world that God, who made the earth, loves the earth, all the earth – the earth is wrapped in the love of God just as it is wrapped in a blanket of life-giving air and water.

It is possible for the human mind to hold large things. It is possible for the human heart to hold even larger things.

I saw some of the photographs from the Copenhagen climate conference this week. The agreements reached have disappointed many in the environmental movement; they fall short of what is needed. But I was moved by the image of the leaders of the world’s powers facing each other around a table, talking about earth. They were talking about our planet. They were bargaining and horse trading over who would do what. Even though they could not rise to heroic action, we have reached an extraordinary moment when the leaders of the great powers understand that they have a collective responsibility for something larger than their nation states. They have a collective responsibility for humanity’s home, this precious planet.

Go forth from here today – in this Christmas week, and treasure your days upon this planet. They are a gift. Focus your thoughts, your heart, and your actions on the larger things – things that matter.

Live in this world as a follower of Jesus. Carry this earth in your heart and mind, exercise your neurons on larger things; use your life for larger things, and use your heart to carry the love of God wherever you go on this earth.

Shalom
Salaam
Peace
Blessed Christmas