Throughout the year, all around the world, people of all backgrounds prepare for various holidays, Holy days, and the festivities associated with them. There are many cultural as well as familial traditions. Among the countless possibilities, the fact remains that most people have their own ideas and preferences for what a holiday “should” be. Whether inherited and passed along as they were from their beginnings—with no change, put into practice with some variation of what came before, or created in an entirely new and different way, oftentimes we establish routines and even deadlines for the tasks that have become part of our preparation for a special day.
Yet, plan as we may, preparing the way can end up looking very different from what one may have set out to do, may have pictured, or expected from the image of years passed. Frequently though the places where there seems to be missteps, no time, no room, or where we may least expect something good, are exactly the places where we are apt encounter the gift of God’s grace. That is often the beauty and the blessing of holidays, Holy days, and the events that surround them. In our attempts to make them special and meaningful in our own ways, we often look up and around a little more, changing our ordinary routines just enough that we also, perhaps unknowingly, open ourselves and our environment up to more of the Extraordinary—the Divine.
When it is all said and done, it is not so much what we do that makes these days special, but rather what is behind our words and actions and the ways in which we are inspired to say and do them. As the holidays, Holy days, and festivities continue to arrive, embrace the “the splendor of glory from God” (Baruch 5:1). Live from it, allowing it to flow through you into the moments of each and every day, spreading peace, love, and joy wherever you may go; providing comfort, strength, restoration and healing wherever it is needed; and building and bridging relationships all around. In this Spirit, may we receive whomever and whatever may come as we are, that is blessed with the splendor of God’s glory.
HopeThatFloats 