IN COUNTLESS WAYS, LARGE AND SMALL, IT COMES TO US

It comes for some of us as we stand in a long checkout line in an overcrowded store, tired and finally out of patience as we rush to finish that one holiday errand too many. Just then we notice unusual warmth in a weary grin of some fellow procrastinator, or a kindly sparkle on the bloodshot eye of some stress-out clerk.
Good wishes are exchanged with a chuckle, and it comes…….

Sometimes it comes carried on a fresh-baked cookies; grandpa’s aftershave and aunties perfume; a log smoldering on a late night fire. We stir a steaming pot of that special stuff mother always makes this time of year, or bury our noses in the new-ish smell of mittens worn for the first time, and memories rush in, along with feeling deeper than memory. And it comes…..

It comes for many from religious devotions. Tidings of joy and prayers of thanksgiving accompany an old, beautiful story of a humble birth and a glorious miracle, of angles and donkeys, shepherds and kings. We hear again a story simple enough for child and deep enough for any philosopher, and it comes……

Visitors bring it with them, whether they are famously festive friends or famously grumpy relatives. All that matters is that we belong with them, and they with us, and they have come. We find it, too, whenever we take time to visit with others, especially if they are sick or in need – and most of all if they are alone, It never leaves the side of the lonely, if only we will bother to seek it there.

It comes through the sights and sounds of the season – moonlight casting shadows in a snowy forest; a favorite carol; household decorations older than anyone in the house; the hearty laughter of adults over the smallest of jokes, and the laughter of children when there is no joke at all, only joy.

Sometimes it comes, all will admit, with a special seasoning of sadness – a melancholy that is almost a pleasure, but not quite. Our family lives do not always measure up to the sentimental ideals presented to us. There are frictions, misunderstandings and worse. Illness, disappointment and worry clash with the enchanted atmosphere of the holiday, and are harder t look at than in the ordinary light of an ordinary day. The absence of the missing breaks hearts that already seemed completely broken.

In spite of it all, it comes………………. Sometimes at the last minute, when we have almost ceased to hope for it. In spite of the hassle and hustle, in spite of the darkness in the world and in out souls, it comes…….. . and for a moment we are better. Not better than others, not even better than the world. But a little better than ourselves.
–Virginia McKnight Binger