I experienced the Christmas Blues this year as I do every year right after the last present is opened and the havoc and chaos of paper, ribbon, and bows are strewn about the room.  I have battled this feeling thinking that I won’t feel so blue if I kept track of the trash as we go.  That doesn’t help.  It is a feeling that marks the end of the anticipation and excitement.  This feeling I get is shared by many who look only to presents and surprised faces on Christmas morning.  If we didn’t have Christ and a “there’s something better than this” theology, then we might be left in this Christmas dissolution.  But “thanks be to God for his indescribable gift” (2 Cor 9:15).  We often battle this “I want more” mentality.  Some of us, like me have a hard time growing out of this thinking.  CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) has really helped me to look beyond myself this semester.  When I see and experience the pain that occurs regularly in hospitals, I begin to show more gratitude.  When I cried with 50 people one Wednesday night around 1:30am as a 32 year old husband unplugged his newlywed bride from the respirator, I saw life as a gift.  Crisis shakes our lives with unbelievable pain.  That’s what makes the good news about Christ so good.  We have a rescue.  Rescue is coming!!!!