I hung up my favorite Christmas decoration last week. I’d forgotten about him, so I smiled when I pulled back the tissue paper and there lay Eeyore, hand-stitched onto a cheerful Christmas stocking made by my mom last year.
Are you familiar with Eeyore , the old grey donkey and pal of Winnie-the-Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood? If you are, you might wonder why I said the stocking was cheerful. Poor gloomy Eeyore is stuck on looking on the dark side of things, often mourning what’s been lost (his tail), or forgotten (his birthday). Unlike the irrepressible Tigger, Eeyore’s most exuberant display of excitement is a flat, almost cynical “Hooray. How wonderful.”
Maybe you’re a bouncy free spirit like Tigger, or a fearful soul like Piglet… but of all of A.A. Milne’s characters, I’ve resonated most with Eeyore. By nature – the old, not the new - what an unnecessary weight I carried around. What a sad old heart beat inside. Like him, I often celebrated my blessings while waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But this stocking is cheerful, genuinely cheerful. Eeyore’s ears are droopy as ever, but there’s a festive hat on his head and a genuine smile on his face. And if you follow his gaze, you see the reason for that smile – a little tree topped with a large, bright yellow Christmas star.
Eeyore and I have both found that by looking at the reason for Christmas, and for life, we don’t have to operate by the old nature anymore. We don’t have to exude gloom or cynicism or despair or negativity. The secret lies in what we’re looking at.
If Eeyore ever becomes distracted and decides to trot off my Christmas stocking, he’ll likely trot right back to his old gloomy point of view. The same goes for me, too. So I’d best hold my position, with my eyes fixed on Jesus, convinced that no matter what else is happening in my Hundred Acre Woods, Christmas is to be celebrated… Life is to be celebrated… because of Jesus.
Hooray!
How really, really wonderful!
(www.disneyclips.com)
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