THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar entered into the hustle and bustle of Bethlehem.  Here was a Martha world, and not a Mary was stirring.(See Luke 10:38-42)  Here, hurry had not been eliminated, let alone ruthlessly.  Here, everybody had watches and clocks, but nobody had time.  It was here that they met the woman who would become the Befana of legend, the old woman of Christmas.  She was stirring alright; cooking, baking cookies, sweeping and cleaning her house.  The wise men told her to come and see the Christ child with them.  She told them she had many important things to do to prepare and that she would come along and bring a gift to the Christ child as soon as she was done.  Alas, she did not come along soon enough and legend has it that the holy family had fled for Egypt before she got there.  And now, every Epiphany eve the old woman gives gifts and candies to all the children she can find as she looks for the Christ child she missed on Christmas.

WESLEY’S QUESTION:  When did I last speak to someone about my faith?

SCRIPTURE:  Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13-17)

FOOLISH WISDOM:  The Christmas season is domestic; and for that reason most people now prepare for it by struggling in tramcars, standing in queues, rushing away in trains, crowding despairingly into teashops, and wondering when or whether they will ever get home.  I do not know whether some of them disappear forever in the toy department or simply lie down and die in the tea-rooms; but by the look of them, it is quite likely.  Just before the great festival of the home the whole population seems to have become homeless.  (G.K. Chesterton)

MUSIC SELECTION:

Gesú Bambino by Pietro A. Yon

© 1993 by Hal Leonard Publishing Company

Jason Moon, solo and Laura Hesse, piano

The music is presented with permission under One License X-732009.