A local publication asked me to share a Christmas memory for their December issue.  Here is what i wrote:
Merry Christmas, Everybody.

Christmas Memory

A great Christmas memory for my family and me is a recurring one.  Each year at least one of our family gatherings happens at “Auntie Anne & Uncle Larry’s”.  Anne and Larry are lifelong musicians who have tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord through the thick and thin of nearly 50 years of marriage. 

Both are accomplished pianists: Anne plays by ear, Larry can sight-read Chopin like he’s reading a Peanuts comic strip.  They have two pianos in their basement music room, and after a brief conference deciding on which key each song should be played in… the sound rushes from both instruments and our voices join in.

The funny thing about this memory is that it has happened so many times that the years run together, mixing in my head until it’s hard for me to remember what year the current calendar says it is.  It’s hard for me to recall from one verse to the next that my Uncle Warren, after whom I named my son, is no longer with us.  If I look away from the place where he used to sit, I swear I can hear his rich tenor mixing with the other voices.  I double take as I look back, and he is not there.

As my daughter sits on the red woolen couch, where Grammie used to sit, it’s hard for me to admit that these, two of the most important people in my life, have never actually met each other: separated for now as earth is separate from heaven.   If there are times in our lives when heaven and earth draw near to one another, for me, this is one of them, and I am so very thankful for it. 

It makes me think of a great reunion one day, at which all of Gods family will sing songs of truth and adoration to Him, without the barrier of life and death, without the hindrance of sin and regret.  What better time than Christmas for the two sides of eternity to brush their shoulders? 

That is, after all, what happened on the first Christmas.  God who is Spirit, took on flesh and entered into the creation which He himself had spoken into existence. 

Douglas Elder, 2011