Before we bid farewell to the month of January, I wanted to share a strange but true custom regarding the celebration of the New Year.  It seems that for more than 25 years, the town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, has dropped a giant package of bologna for New Year’s Eve.  Lebanon is renowned for its bologna, first pioneered by the Pennsylvania Dutch.  A local business, Kutztown Bologna, made a 100 pound, six-foot long piece of meat for the inaugural celebration in 1997.  Ever since, bologna has been a fixture of Lebanon’s New Year’s celebration.  Unique and strange, yes.  But to the folks that treasure their tradition and have pride in their product, nothing could be more fitting.

We too began our new year with a tradition, a treasured story of the birth of a baby in Bethlehem.  The story becomes more extraordinary as we tell it.   This child, born of Mary, would become our Savior, the Savior of the World.  The carpenter’s son from Nazareth would grow to speak and heal as only God himself could do.  Our story twists and turns; when the time arrives for our “King” to make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he rides on the back of a donkey!   Finally his death did not receive the regal burial of a king, but he hung painfully from a wooden cross.  Is it any wonder that those hearing this story for the first time might find it strange and unbelievable.   Yet we believe!   No words are truer for us.  Thanks be to God for sharing this truth with us, for kindling our belief, and for offering us the forgiveness and salvation that Strange nothing else can provide.  And that’s a true story!

Judy