I'm Back From Christmas

Well, my family & I have wrapped up all the Christmas festivities for 2006 as many of you have as well. Is it me or is Christmas absolutely exhausting? We were able to spread all of our Christmas stuff out over the course of an entire week rather than in just a couple of days, but at the end of it I felt more drained than I imagined I would. Of course there was about 1000 miles of driving involved in our Christmas festivities this year, but even during that week when we were travelling to all our families' homes, I was just dragging. Yesterday, which was actually the most low-key of all of our week (mainly because we were 400 miles away from family!), I stopped to remember that the word "holiday" originally comes from the words "holy day". Biblically, a holy day should be a day of not only celebration but of rest & reflection as well. I mentioned this both here & in some recent teaching that I did, but I didn't truly learn that lesson until I went through an utterly chaotic Christmas season. It was nice to have yesterday to just sit with my wife & baby girl & just be together without worrying about having to be somewhere at a certain time & seeing as many people as possible. I hope all of us learned how to rest on our holy day of Christmas, & hopefully you didn't have to learn to rest & remember the gift of Christmas in the same way as I did!