Today is the 7th day of Christmas - seven swans a-swimming .. Imagine a bevy of swans swimming gorgeously around the room. And the theme today is: Rejoice!

For unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given ..

Rejoice! for the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us," . (Eugene Peterson: "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes.")

"I will greatly rejoice in the Lord," says Isaiah, "my whole being shall exult in my God .."

Rejoice is our response to the miracle of God-with-us - Emmanu - el.

Rejoice .. is the theme of our Christian lives.

... Only it doesn't always come easy. Our lives, and the world's life, have a lot of darkness in them. Anger, pain, loss, frustration, suffering .. our own .. other people's .. and to rejoice is not to run away from all that ..

If our joy in the fact of God is to mean anything, it has to mean everything .. it has to be joy expressed in full awareness of the very hardest realities of life ..
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Today is also New Year's Eve .. a time of endings and beginnings .. of new beginnings .. of resolutions ..

And here is a new year's resolution for us all. Let us learn to rejoice ever more fully, ever more constantly ..

How do we do that? I have two thoughts for us .. and I bet some of you have more. If you will e-mail them to me (address on Bulletin), I'll put them into our parish newsletter for us all.

One way of rejoicing is simply to remember to say Thank You. To say thank you all day, every day .. and to find more and more and things to say thank you for. We do, I think, remember to say thank you for our basic blessings - our life itself, our friends and families, for food to eat, and shelter, and all the privileges that come simply from being middle-class westerners .. "rich Christians in an age of hunger," someone named us. We could talk for a long time about how lucky we are. But when you've exhausted that list, just look around you and find more. Nature. Children. Books. Bicyles. The list can go on forever. Consider traffic lights .. have you ever noticed how beautiful a traffic light is? - that very rich red, or green, or yellow ..? You get the point .. You can, if you put your mind to it, find thousands and thousands and thousands of things to be thankful for. Do it. God is good. God is here. Rejoice!