What Moves Your Rock?

In California’s Death Valley, a giant dry lake bed known as Racetrack Playa is the site of an interesting natural phenomenon. Giant rocks that dot the lake bed are sliding around the perfectly flat valley — and no one knows how it’s happening!

This is the “First Sunday After Christmas.”

Even the lectionary calendar indicates what you and your people may be feeling. The heightened focus of Advent is behind you. The joy and memories of Christmas Day are behind you.

Now it’s just the first Sunday after Christmas ... a Sunday named for what is no longer.

With Christmas on a Thursday this year, a lot of people may still be away with family this weekend. Others may have been at Christmas Eve or Christmas Day services and checked off the church box for this week. And you’ve probably been busy yourself, coming out of the Advent season while trying to make space for your own family time and personal interactions with the Christ of Christmas.

So if you’re not careful, this Sunday could be a hiccup in the calendar and a missed opportunity. It could be the service that makes Ordinary Time look extraordinary.

But remember that this is the Sunday before New Year’s Eve, and the time when most people in our...