All of a sudden it was Christmas again

Dear Bloggers,

For most of us, the holiday of Christmas is often filled with food, presents, family, friends, church family maybe, and many other festive things. It's a time when we get together to remember times long past and to discuss things that are going on today, whether it's funny stories and just getting a few great laughs, or getting together most importantly to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, or to discuss world events and such. Some people don't celebrate at all, and that's OK too. Everybody has their own thing. Christmas can be a very fun holiday and a time to connect with others and to be giving generously. But for some, Christmas can be a very painful reminder of something else. That is, the loss of a loved one. . . . . . . 

Just when the holiday season had started, a family I know lost her man and father who was a very important and much loved family member in their lives to a sudden death of at present unknown causes. They were like everybody else, getting ready for the holidays and looking forward to friends and family getting together. Then the rug was pulled out from under them. Instead of joy, they are feeling intense grief at this sudden loss. Now all of a sudden their plans for Christmas will have an absent family member; husband, father, mentor and friend to so many. Almost all the 1,000 people of our little village went to the funeral to pay their respects. It goes to show what he was in life by the amount of friends he had and the respect they had for him. He earned every bit of it, and I hope he is now with the Lord. I grieve along with the family and friends, for the loss is a very big and devastating one to those of us who knew him.

Many other people have lost loved ones to horrible circumstances during the holidays. Car accidents or other kinds of accidents, suicide, homicide, a sudden or perhaps a lingering illness, and other terrible situations. During the holidays the loss can be devastating and overshadow the holiday and for some very good reasons. It's difficult to enjoy the holiday when you have suffered the loss of someone you loved more than anything during that time period, and their absence creates a void that will never again be completely filled. Christmas is now not only a holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ, but it's now a reminder of the death of a loved one. In time it may heal, but the scar will forever remain, lingering in the back of their minds. That's the very sad part of it, and I would never wish it upon anyone. 

But there is one thing I have always found in all my 44 years. Having lost loved ones myself and thinking of them during Christmas, one thing was very clear even if everything else wasn't at the time. Even though I am not much of a believer, I still think that God doesn't always cause death, but at times he may take someone for reasons known only to him at the time. Sometimes it's a blessing depending on the circumstances, especially if someone is suffering horribly. But often death happens for reasons that God has nothing to do with. 

We all make choices at times, and sometimes choices may take us into a dangerous path which can either take our lives or the lives of others. It's not done on purpose of course, and it's never foreseen, it's just sometimes a result of a person's judgment that isn't always up to par, and unfortunately there are sometimes consequences. Just one mistake can change the course of a person's life forever. Many grieve along with us when we lose somebody because of those circumstances. When it comes to appealing to human nature, he can't change his natural laws for just one person.

Once he created those laws, it had to be universal for everyone, even if it meant pain and heartache at times. The collapse of the Twin Towers is a perfect example of how he could not just re-raise the structure and reverse what happened. Or more recent the shooting on a elementary school in Newton were more than twenty lives were lost, it feels that God has abandoned them. He would have had to do that with everything else as well. 

I give all of you a huge hug and encouragement. Don't ever give up. Our loved ones want us to keep going and keep their memory alive. If we do that, we will always be honoring not only their memory, but honoring them as people who were always will be important to us. As they thought us many important things in live. 

I hope your Christmas and New Year will be very prosperous and happy. Merry Christmas to all of you.

The Old Sailor,

How to keep the faith?

"Remain confident in the survival of all positive and negative life experiences."

Dear Bloggers,

It's not that I am deeply religious but I've planned to read the Bible once in my life and I planned to get a better understanding of fellow believers.

If you have the feeling that you have lost everything and it is getting hard to stay positive, you will start looking for getting out of this misery.

If your life slides down towards the valley; you will try to slow it down. But if your mind starts slipping too it is going to be a bit of a different story. I am luckely a realistic kind of person and I can quite quickly adapt to these kind of crisis situations.

Anyway no matter what happens it will give some kind of stress. The biggest challenge is to look for another job as I simply cannot sit back and relax.

The Old Sailor appears no longer to feel safe on the spot where he always was safe. A very familiar feeling when something bad happens to you: literally and figuratively as the ground beneath your feet is sinking away and you from one moment to the other lost all grip. For me such a feeling is recognizable.

And the Bible poet writes: In you oh Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness, turn your ear to me, save me! The poet cries out as the most important thing that should be right in this situation. That there is someone who does justice to you and at least listens to you. You need an ear, which turns to you and will look at you now and what is involved here. A line below the poet asks: Be to me a protective rock? This man feels in a valley, which can be hardly any deeper, a dip where he never will come out. It suddenly calls on me, that this can be seen as my situation.

Only a long way later in the psalm it is the poet that realizes how bad it actually was with him or her. That is why we read, "I am become as broken crockery. A striking image: yourself being the pottery a pitcher, as a part of an expensive dinner set. So worth the trouble of respect: very, cool, healthy. And now suddenly broken, there are cracks in it. Always have felt yourself healthy, suddenly you where not quite sure. For example to live with it always the threat that the humiliating pain comes again as in the beginning. Not sure more of the job, the relationship where you were happy. Your partner to let go, or worse, losing him or her to death.

Broken pottery? never fully and enjoy carefree. Another long way away in the Psalm says the poet? But I trust in You, O Lord, I say: Thou art my God. My times are in your hand? Times, it says there. Time in the plural! Time as a whole firm, solid as a rock. But times, as a succession from one time to a different time, which also wrote Ecclesiastes. A time of joy, a time of sorrow. A time to weep, a time to laugh. Times of ups, downs of times. And all those times together in the hand of the Eternal. Also”My” times. The time of once my health and now became suddenly the time to care about.

The poet of Psalm knows all about this. The poet does not say in this psalm: it happens to me from God. The poet says: there is a hand, which held all the time, held it together, namely: the hand of the Eternal. That contradicts a blind faith in a kind of fatal, crippling fate. Confidence in the Hand that holds you all times of your life around, can create space for it anyway to keep.

We people carry our biography with us. The question is: Do I want to learn something from my life experiences? And dare I ask to be like: where am I?, Am I maybe too much?, Do I enjoy enough?, And where do I go? And last but not least, I dare my time, so my life. My times of ups and my times of downs. My times as a succession from one time to a different time. Can I through the lives of all my positive and negative life experiences remain confident in the Hand? Who holds me and keeps all these times of my life going?

For even as the poet at the end of Psalm 31 wrote to others to say: ”Be strong, all ye that hope in the Eternal” May it be so. I had never imagined such things were in the Bible. Do not think that I'm suddenly converted, but I understand better now that people can draw strength from their faith if the story is explained in the right way.

The Old Sailor,