People Who Matter

On this Christmas morning I happened to pick up the end-of-year issue of Newsweek (December 28, 2009), which bears this headline on its cover: "People who Matter on What Matters Most." The "people who matter" are leaders in business, government, and entertainment. They talk with interviewers about the issues of the day as they view them.

My thoughts immediately turned to the Christmas story. The people who mattered were a group of shepherds and a young family spending a night away from home. The person who mattered most was a helpless baby resting in a feed trough in a stable. What matters most, in this story, is the coming of God into the world and the resulting life characterized by love, peace, forgiveness, and healing.

Just before picking up the magazine, I read the morning paper. A front-page feature story describes Danny Stone, unemployed and homeless, staying with his wife and their five-year old daughter in a cheap motel in Nashville while he looks for work. ( http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091225/NEWS01/912250343/Family+that+lost+home+finds+hope+in+Nashville+ )

According to the story, the Otter Creek Church of Christ is helping the Stone family to get through this crisis. For this group of Jesus worshippers, the Stones are people who matter. For the Stones, Associate Minister Doug Sanders and his fellow church members are people who matter. And the thing that matters most is that God has come to them all in the person of Jesus to bring love, peace, forgiveness, and healing.

All of us, then, are people who matter. And what matters most is the life-changing presence of God in the person of Jesus Christ.