Welcome to the Sunday after Christmas! Tell me, has the glory begun to fade?  A pastor recently described his shopping experience at one of the busy malls. He watched a small boy put his hand hopefully on an inexpensive Christ-child on a counter. "What is this?" he asked his mother, who had him by the hand. "C'mon," the hurried woman answered, "you don't want that." She dragged him grimly away, her mind dark with gift thoughts, following a star of her own devising.

Strange, isn't it, the way the story behind the glory gets lost in the Christmas rush? It is something of a paradox, but a day that should be holy with thoughts and dreams of the highest becomes cluttered with the irritations and frustrations that come with shopping. Maybe the hurried mother was right, and we don't want Christ.…