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