James Thurber, in his occasional piece, “Merry Christmas,” writes: “It didn’t surprise me that Americans send out about a billion and a half Christmas Cards every year.  That would have been my guess, give or take a quarter billion.  Coming within 250 million is getting pretty close nowayears…”  He goes on to describe who most of these cards are sent to, at least those that disembark from the Thurber home:  “[people] met on a cruise, at a doctor’s office, while fighting a grass fire in Westchester, the doorman at a restaurant in Soho, the young woman who cured my hiccup’s in Chasen’s, and a West Virginia taxi driver who is writing a biography of General Beauregard.”

            Similarly, Truman Capote, in his short piece “A Christmas Memory” writes how he and his elderly cousin Sook used to bake and send out 30 fruitcakes every year from their farm in Monroeville, Alabama.  “And who are they for?” he asks, “the larger share are for people we’ve met maybe once, perhaps not at all…Like president Roosevelt.  Like the Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo…Abner Packer, the driver of the six 0’clock bus from Mobile who exchanges waves with us every day…”

            Both men, one with humor, and one in nostalgia illustrate and emphasize the truth that it is often easier to maintain good will for folks you know very little (or not really at all) than for those you see every day.  It is easier to keep a room tidied up that you never enter, than it is to keep your living room presentable.  Some families live in the kitchen, some in the family room, some in the family van – but we all know that the sheer act of living together untidies things.

            Of course I am speaking of our relationships, not of our furniture and carpet.

But encourage one another day by day, as long as it is called ‘today, ’lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  Hebrews 3.13

            The Hebrews writer has given us a single sentence which bears such a load of meaning.  If we fail to value the blessing we have together, and to express our thankfulness to each other, and our appreciation of each other, we will become hard, will be deceived, will sin.

            We are blessed.  Not just with warm beds and warm food but with the warmth of family.  “We” is our greatest blessing – that we have each other, through Jesus Christ.  We must remember this, and we must say this to each other.

            On behalf of my family, and our office staff (I know there is some overlap there) let me say how blessed we all feel to be part of this family – to follow our elders, to serve with our deacons, to learn from our Bible class teachers, to watch our children grow, to pray over our sorrows together, to rejoice at new birth into our family.

            May God bless us all, together, in the coming year – or bring us home together, according to his will.