Midweek Musing- December 31, 2025

Midweek Musing – December 31, 2025

It was my freshman year at Presbyterian College, sitting in a religion class taught by the late Rev. Dr. Jack Presseau, when my mind was quietly and quite thoroughly blown. KaBoom!

We were talking about world religions and religious calendars, about festivals and feasts and fasts, about what he called “sacred time.” Somewhere in that conversation, Dr. Presseau mentioned, almost in passing that the word holiday we use today comes from the phrase holy day. And at one point in history, there was no distinction. All holidays were holy days. These were days that religious and royal leaders set apart. These days were meant for worship, gratitude, rest, and reflection.

This etymology had never occurred to me.

Though this simple understanding had been right there all along.

As was often the case during my freshman year, I realized I was discovering things that had always been in plain sight, yet I had never truly noticed them. That small linguistic insight opened up a much larger realization: over time, secular holidays have often come to overshadow the holy. Even holy celebrations themselves can be drowned out by noise, schedules, expectations, and consumerism. The sacred is still present—but it requires intentionality to see it.

That reality means we have to take special care to remember the holy.

And yet, that does not mean we must reject holidays altogether. Sometimes, if we are open to a bit of work, a holiday can still be claimed for holy work even if it is not officially a holy day.

The truth is not every sacred moment is labeled as such on the calendar. Indeed, most are not.

And December 31st is one of those days.

It is not a holy day in the church liturgical sense. There are no assigned readings or special services attached to it. But it offers something deeply valuable if we allow it: a pause. A threshold. A moment to examine where we have been and to discern where God might be leading us next.

The world urges us to fill this day with resolutions, goals, and declarations of self-improvement. Those things are not wrong. But as Christians, we are also invited to notice something quieter—and often more transformative.

Taking time to notice simple joys in a world that constantly demands brighter, shinier, bigger, and sparklier things is not just some excuse to sit and be lazy. No, taking time to notice the simple joys and beauties in our world is actually active resistance.

This work of noticing is a refusal to believe that meaning is found only in consumerism or spectacle or power or opulence. No, this work is choosing depth over distraction, presence over performance.

It is, in many ways, the quiet wisdom of A Charlie Brown Christmas. While everyone else clamors for big, colorful, aluminum trees that shout success and sparkle, Charlie Brown chooses a small, unimpressive tree, one that looks like it hardly matters at all. And yet, that simple tree ends up pointing more truthfully to the meaning of Christmas than anything else on the lot.

Less than a week ago, we celebrated the birth of a Savior who came not with flashing lights or royal fanfare, but in simplicity through a helpless infant laid in a manger, born into a world too busy to notice. God chose the small. The overlooked. The quiet joy. And in doing so the God of surprises turned the world upside down.

Jesus once said, “Consider the lilies of the field.”

Not conquer them.

Not measure them.

Not use them.

Simply notice them.

The lilies were already there, clothed in beauty and sustained by God’s hand, long before anyone thought them important. Most people walked right past them. But Jesus saw in them a reminder of God’s daily, faithful care.

And scripture returns to this theme again and again.

Jonathan Lockwood Huie captures this truth beautifully: “The essence of life is not in the great victories and grand failures, but in the simple joys.”

The Psalms understand this well. They praise God for mighty acts and cosmic wonders, yes but they also celebrate small gifts: daily bread, shelter, steady presence, mercy renewed each morning. The psalmists knew that God is just as present in the ordinary as in the extraordinary.

So, as this year draws to a close, perhaps our first calling is not to resolve—but to recognize.

To notice what has already been given.

To name the simple joys we may have overlooked.

To thank God for the lilies that have been quietly blooming all along.

Before we rush into what comes next, may we linger long enough to do this holy work not only here at the turning of the calendar, but in the ordinary days that follow.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Alleluia Amen.

Grace and peace (and Happy New Year),