Posted by
The Patriot on Thursday, December 25, 2008 12:30:45 AM
As I sit here enjoying a sip of a particularly nice single malt whisky, I am watching the clock tick ever closer to the stroke of midnight and the dawning of Christmas Day. I'm listening to Pavarotti sing "O Holy Night," and reflecting on the season and its meaning. I just left my sister's house, where she is raising my two nieces without the help of their father, who walked away from them five years ago.
They are wonderful girls, who in their short lives have already taught me more about love than I learned in all the thirty-plus years I lived before they arrived in my life. The most important thing I learned about love is that it is real. You cannot touch it or taste it or see it with your eyes; none of our earthly senses can detect it. It is not a thing of science. There are no tests that can prove its existence, and there are no formulas or computer programs that can replicate it. But it is real.
No matter how much we can deduce with our brains and measure with the technology we create, we can only know that we love and are loved through our souls. Souls that are God's creation make it possible for us to experience and share His greatest gift...love. So when asked how I can know there is a God, I respond, "because I love." He demonstrated this greatest gift two-thousand and eight years ago when He sent His Son to save us.
I will go back to my sister's house in the morning. We will all exchange gifts...we'll throw wrapping paper everywhere. There will be Christmas stockings dumped in the floor, one bewildered cat, games and toys, new slippers, books and music. And there will be love...the greatest gift of all.
Thank you to those who read my words on these pages, and for your compliments and comments. I wish you all the Merriest of Christmases, I wish you peace, and most of all I wish you love.