Hello friends. Welcome to the Wild at Harre podcast here in the last installment of 2021.

John Eldridge here with you this week and if you look down at the time code and you said, oh wow,

this is a shorter one. There's a reason behind it and the reason is contained here in the podcast.

We are in the week between Christmas and New Year's but this is a season the next two weeks

in the church calendar historically have been called Christmas tide from here wherever you

picking this up to January 6th the feast of epiphany which celebrates the arrival of the magi

and the bringing of the guests to Christ. And the purpose of that is so brilliant because there's

something in human nature and particularly in the hour that we're living in that just wants to

rush on now. I love the brilliance of the church down through the centuries establishing the

Christian calendar and establishing Christmas tide because there's something in human nature

and there is certainly something built into the mechanism of what we would call the world

that just wants to sweep all that behind us now and get us rushing into, you know,

back to work, back to plans. Okay, let's start scheduling, you know, the New Year out and God is saying,

wait, wait, pause, take a breath. We are still in Christmas tide. This story that we are

rehearsing has critical components yet to it on December 28th, for example, is the feast of the Holy

Innocence, the remembrance of Herod's order for the execution of all of the young boys around

Bethlehem when he learns that the magi had tricked him and had not come back to him to report where

they found Christ. He was furious and you see the desperate nature of the evil one himself who knows

something about this child, but he doesn't know everything. And so this rush to try and extinguish

the invasion of the kingdom of God, which began with that first cry of the breath of Jesus in

Bethlehem a few nights ago. 28th, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Innocence. We remember the

sobriety of the story that we're living in. And then on in 2 January 6th, the feast of Epiphany,

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