How can I know if God is calling me to be celebrating?

In a year that makes Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" look like a leisurely stroll down memory lane, we may well wonder if it is appropriate to celebrate this year.

The government is telling us to stay home for Thanksgiving; avoid the travel, the large family gatherings, the food poisoning when the turkey is left out too long. Soon, they'll be telling us to do all our gift shopping online and stay sequestered in our Hobbit holes for Christmas. No Christmas concerts with little 8-year-olds forgetting their lines or White Elephant Parties where someone always brings an old shoe. And forget about New Year's Eve. If a ball drops in Times Square and no one is there to watch, does the new year really come?

What a horrible thought.

But, yes, God does call us to celebrate this holiday season. We can be thankful for many things—video chat, our hard-working first-responders and essential workers, that we don't have to eat our aunt's Jell-O salad this year (But she'd be happy to send you the recipe!). Christmas, of course, is always worth celebrating no matter what the year. That God sent His Son to live as a human so He could fully experience what we do, and then die as a human to save our fallen humanity—we need that truth this year for sure.

As for New Year's, I think it's especially important this year. We can toast (non-alcoholic sparkling cider, for you Baptists) to friends and family we've lost and those we miss. We can be thankful for surviving the year. And we can rest in the knowledge that God is with us, no matter what 2021 brings.

We can also be thankful that, just this once, we don't have to worry about that unhappily married friend dragging their cousin's sister's personal trainer's dog-washer to the party to try to set us up. Uggggh. It's enough to make a person wonder if God calls people to celibacy!

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