Christmas Ashes

Yesterday I picked up Len. Nothing unusual about that, right?
A month ago that statement would be ordinary. Today it is strange and sad.

You see, the great leader and CEO of ProMark Financial Services has been reduced to a 14 inch by 8 inch box. A small pile of ashes is all that physically remains of one of the most extraordinary human beings I have known. Yesterday I brought Len to our house.

On the way home with Len, I had to stop and do some Christmas shopping. It was surreal to think here I was buying presents and Len was no longer present.

As I pondered the reality of this sorrow, I began to feel a heaviness invade my soul. Life is so fickle, so superficial, so capricious, so unpredictable, and then it's reduced to a few ashes.

Christmas songs were playing in BARNES & NOBLE...but "Here Comes Santa Claus" wasn't giving me much hope...but then right there in the liberal aisles of books on "How to Make a Million" and "How to Seduce a Woman" and "How to Become Your Own God"....the truth of Jesus began to pierce my melancholy meditations.

As the song "Joy to the World, The LORD has come" rang out it hit me Jesus was born in a BARN and He is NOBLE!

His regal nobility shatters the darkness of death, it reframes life from a few short years to an eternity of glory. His coming breaks the curse!! Ashes are not the end of us. They are only the evidence that we were once here, but have left for heaven forever.

As the song goes on to say:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

My SORROWS will not GROW, for HE has broken the curse! Let the blessings flow!
This is the message of Christmas! Ashes are not the final word. Jesus Is!