Different This Year
Christmas was
different this year. It all began with
an earlier than usual Thanksgiving, in fact, it was so early than when we
scheduled our Christmas Banquets to welcome in the season, they were actually
still in November. That was different,
but it didn't seem to affect our crowd and we had several first time guests!
Next were our Christmas
Concerts, a full 3 days of performances on the second weekend of December. Decent crowds, again, many guests AND the “heavy lifting” of the December calendar
was over before the Fellowship Meeting.
That was different!
The two weekends
before Christmas were busy, but not complicated. They allowed for some extra family time – we were
even able to attend the Fort Lauderdale Boat Parade with the grand-kids and visit
to a local carnival. That was different!
Christmas Day had our
built in traditions – breakfast at our house, the reading of the Christmas
story and the new little elves that could now hand out the
presents before opening them – but it was different
also. Through the miracles of Facetime
and iChat we were able to share the moment with my parents in Peru and my
brother in LA. All of my sister’s family
was in town for Christmas, a definite difference from the past few years, and
one of my nephews had this crazy idea of having a “photo booth” for crazy
family pictures. That was different!
My take away from this
Christmas is simple – different can be refreshingly different! Maybe we can use that as a guidepost for our Florida
Fellowship for 2013. Sure, the calendar
for the meetings will be different,
the off months will give us some different
opportunities for wider fellowship at the national level and among our men, and
yes, we may even discover a few other different
things along the way. But DIFFERENT
might prove to be refreshingly DIFFERENT!
I hope to see you in
January!
Russell Johnson
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