WHAT COULD BE

Too many miles, too much caffeine, too restless to sleep all of which led to Arlena surfing the channels as we lay in bed. She stopped at the end of an old Murder, She Wrote. We had no idea what the story had been about but it must have been set around Christmas because Jessica was saying to Doc, “Christmas should be about what could be and not about what is.” Isn’t that so true?

Granted, this is not yet the Christmas Season no matter what the merchants want us to believe and to which they want us to respond by buying, buying, buying. However, what Jessica opined about the meaning of Christmas could be said not only about every season in the Church’s year but also about every one of us as Christians, namely, “Being a Christian should be about what could be and not about what is.” Even more: “Life itself should be about what could be and not about what is.”

Yet, more often than not we find the Christmas season and being a Christian and living our daily lives more about being about and responding to what is rather than what each and all could be. We get so overwhelmed by the present that we have little time and often no inclination to think about what could be, even what should be. And even when we take the time to ponder what could be, we throw up our hands in frustration because what is seems to be in control of our very lives.

Yes, there is very much good in what is. Life is not all that bad and not always difficult. But the good can always be better and whatever is not good also can be made better. But how? How do we make Christmas/being a Christian/life itself about being active, proactive in being about what could be? A quick and easy response might be to ask ourselves “What would Jesus do in such a situation?” The problem with that is that we have no idea what Jesus would do because we are not Jesus.

The better question to ask ourselves is “What would Jesus, my faith in Jesus, have me do?” Asking that question is the first step in making what is into what could be. That, in many ways, is the easy part. The hard part is actually doing what is necessary to make the present better, into what it could be were it not for our own sinfulness and selfishness. For the reason why things are not what they could and should be is simply that too many of us either like it the way it is for us or do not want to make the effort needed to make the changes that are needed.

None of this is a pretty picture, of course. But, then, when we look around and observe what is going in in the world about, the picture is not what it should or could be. Unless we are honest with ourselves about how bad that picture is in so many ways, and unless we resolve to do our part to do something about it, nothing will change. Individually we cannot make the world as it is into what it could be, but we can begin to make our own lives into what they could be. That is only a start, but a much-needed one.