Press Pause

by Anne White

One of Frederick Buechner’s last published books was titled The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life. Near the beginning, he wrote:

…art is saying Stop. It helps us to stop by putting a frame around something and makes us see it in a way we would never have seen it under the normal circumstances of living, as so many of us do, on sort of automatic pilot, going through the world without really seeing much of anything.

This passage is about the purposes of literature, but I think it also applies to the way the world suddenly seems to stop for Christmas.

Kermit: Yeah, life would just pass in a blur if it weren't for times like this. (A Muppet Family Christmas)

There's a rightness in that. 

For the little child is the true St Christopher: in him is the light and life of Christ; and every birth is a message of salvation, and a reminder that we, too, must humble ourselves and become as little children. This is, perhaps, the real secret of the world's progress––that every babe comes into the world with an evangel, which witnesses of necessity to his parents' hearts. That we, too, are children, the children of God, that He would have us be as children, is the message that the newborn child never fails to bear, however little we heed, or however soon we forget. (Charlotte Mason, Parents and Children, pp. 281-282)

 Let's all make time to stop and see.