Tidings from Bethlehem Jan 2026

TIDINGS from BETHLEHEM

                                                             -----Monthly News From In & Around Our Parish

January 2026

 Tremendous Potential

“Do to others…”

-Luke 6:31 (NRSV)

I admit, this is not an easy time of year.  The Christmas holiday is in the rearview mirror and Easter seems to rest on a distant horizon.  The days are short.  The cold has settled in.  And the snow shovels stand at the ready for the next inconvenient squall.  It is only a matter of time before someone strolls into my office and utters the truest words, “Pastor, everything just seems so gray.”  I understand; the trees are bare, the yard is a mire of matted grass, and even the roads are laced with a crust of salt and grime.  It is easy, and sometimes justifiable to momentarily succumb to the dreariness.  But before you resign yourself to the winter blues and blahs and whatever else we are calling them these days, I would invite you to look a little deeper, quite literally.

Perhaps the natural world is not at its most refulgent and radiant at the moment, but just beneath the bark of those barren trees there is a hidden energy just biding its time.  There is life brewing and stewing in every root and branch.  The same could be said for those withered yards, surely a dormant seed anticipates the moment when it will burst forth from the rich, dark, moist soil.  And even those roads, rife with winter detritus and lingering ice-melt, we know a stout steady spring rain will have them glistening in no time.  Trust me, don’t lose hope, a new season is coming.

And I know what some of you might be thinking, I didn’t come to the newsletter for a biology lesson.  Fair enough but allow me to suggest that our gloominess isn’t always connected solely with the natural world, but the people that inhabit it.  Just as surely as someone might enter my office in the days ahead and say, “Pastor, everything seems so gray,” so too, I might hear, “Pastor, people are really going crazy!”  But before we convince ourselves that we have everyone figured out, and that we have seen all there is to see.  I would invite you to look a little deeper.

In one of the most important sermons that Jesus ever preached, he insisted that we should, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  This mandate is one of the most important in the whole of scripture.  Theologians and philosophers have written volumes about that one sentence.  For me, the deep and lasting value in Jesus’ admonition is the recognition that before we do anything to anyone, we need to consider what it would be like to be on the receiving end of the action.  Taking “The Golden Rule” seriously forces the most self-centered toward a more compassionate and empathic stance.  Can it make a difference?  Absolutely!

If we are in a season in which we are increasingly frustrated with, or are growing increasingly disillusioned by our neighbors, it might be time to tap the brakes.  We might want to pause before making our definitive judgment.  Pause and ask, would I want to endure the same kind of judgment.  Would I want to be dismissed entirely?  The answer, no.  None of us, regardless of our age or station in life, are today who we will be tomorrow.

As we enter the New Year, let’s do so with some level of joy, expectation, and hopefulness.  The Spirit is present and working in all of our lives, enacting a grace powerful enough to usher us into a season of serious growth, a whole new way of being, one which is more beautiful and reflective of God’s goodness than we could have possibly imagined.  Indeed, this may just be a happy New Year!        

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Dan