Somebody asks the grandmother whose two grandchildren are in carriages, "Well, how old are they?" And she says, "The doctor is five, and the lawyer is six months old."
And there are two Jewish grandmothers sitting on a bench and one goes, "Hoy", and the other ones goes "hoy". And then they say, "Well, let's stop talking about the children."
Aristotle suggested that everything has a telos, an inner aim. The telos of an acorn is an oak tree. It's what the acorn is striving to be. The telos of life, Aristotle said, was happiness. That's what we're all striving for. Its absence causes restlessness.
Songwriters, poets, theologians and philosophers of every ilk reflect on that empty space inside, which we just can't seem to fill. The adolescent feels angst and the octogenarian feels the insufficiency of things attainable.
In the Gordon Lightfoot song "Changes" by Phil Ochs we hear the words:
Sit by my side, come as close as the air
Share in a memory of gray
Wander in my words, dream about the pictures
That I play of changes
Green leaves of summer turn red in the fall
To brown and to yellow they fade
And then they have to die, trapped within
The circle time parade of changes
Time does little to fill the hunger of the soul. Memories fade even while
Scenes of my young years were warm in my mind
Visions of shadows that shine
'Til one day I returned and found they were the
Victims of the vines of changes
Change buffets us; and the rate of change today demands that we be grounded in something solid, like values and faith. Isn't it sad that many in society demand that schools and social environments be free of these more solid influences: no prayer in schools; no use of Christ in the Christmas season.
Och's song goes on:
Like petals in the wind, we're puppets to the silver
Strings of souls, of changes
According to the song leaves and memories, and even our very souls, trapped in time, are dancing like puppets to the strings of change. We do not want to be manipulated like that. We need to be grounded in something rock-solid, something that endures.
Fortunately, God's presence in our lives is very real. In Luke 5 Jesus sits in a boat to teach the multitude on the shore. Jesus wants to talk to us today, to ground us in solid values and teachings.
Do we want to pick up that bible daily and listen to His words? Do we want to take advantage of those occasions in church where God's ministers touch us with Christ's teachings? Or are we puppets to the silver strings of the souls, of changes?
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me" (Revelations 3:20).
Through a baby at Bethlehem, it is possible for us to approach God. God became one of us to tell us he loves us and is present to us.
The miracle of Christmas invites us to accept our humanity as good and to let God work in us to give us joy and hope. God can make us whole and fill that void inside us.
