It was not what I expected to have happen at a White House Conference in Washington, D.C. on the relationship of the faith community to race relations in the United States. But because of that meeting I began to realize what Christmas is really all about. We were black, white, and brown, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Bahai and Native Americans called together to discuss the relationship of religion to race. Ironically enough, it was the Indian chief who taught me the meaning of Isaiah.

Into the midst of the theological meanderings of those of us who wanted to write another paper, have another meeting, take another workshop to combat racism, the Chief brought the message of Isaiah again. He stood up slowly, folded his hands quietly in front of him, looked out over our heads and said softly, “I have spent my life teaching our children to say ‘thank you’: Thank you for the grass. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the stranger. Thank you for all the people of the world. I think that if we learn to say ‘thank you’ for everything, we will come to realize its value, to respect it, to see it as sacred.”

It was a simple speech but it had a kind of cataclysmic effect on my soul. It gave me pause. It made me think. It raised the specter of Isaiah in me all over again. It made me think newly about what the scriptures are really talking about when they tell us to “make straight the way of God.” I suddenly realized that Christmas is time to shout, “thank you.”

Christmas is the commitment to life made incarnate. It is the call to see God everywhere and especially in those places we would not expect to find glory and grace. It is the call to exult in life.

Christmas is the obligation to see that everything leads us directly to God, to realize that there is no one, nothing on earth that is not the way to God for me. I knew instantly that the moment we begin to really celebrate Christmas, to look at everyone and everything as a revelation of God, to say “thank you” for them, that racism would be over, war would be no more, world hunger would disappear, everything would be gift, everyone would be sacred.

Indeed, it is simple but oh, so clear: All we have to do to “make straight the way of God” is to say “thank you,” to learn to live intensely, to have a zeal for life, to develop a passion for life.