Remembering Christmas Past

Today is Christmas Eve.

As I was dragging myself towards my first cup of coffee this morning, Terri said “I don’t know if this is possible, or if you would even want to, or if it would just be too hard, but could you post Justin reading from Christmas of ’94?”
“I can do that,” I said.
Several years back, I was going through a stack of VHS video tapes (remember those?) and transferring them to DVDs, hoping to preserve them for a longer expected lifespan, when we came across the video tape of 1994. This was compliments of Terri’s older brother Ken who had invested in video technology for the purpose of capturing memories of family life, for which we are forever grateful.
In 1994, Justin was 9 years old and was already active in the music ministry at St. Peter’s, singing with the other children for the Christmas Eve Mass, with assistance that year from both Terri and I (and the Hunter’s). He was also selected to proclaim the First Reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
And proclaim it, he did! Seeing the video from 1994 reminded us of that.
When Justin decided to return to school for his Masters Degree, I put together a video of his life from snapshots and video clips and titled it “Looking Back, Moving Forward.” In this I used a snippet of the Christmas of 1994 video.
Christmas of 1994. It seems like a long time ago and in some respects, it is. You can do the math.
But it is good to look back where you’ve been when you ponder where you are.
This Christmas, we still mourn the loss of our dear son, Justin, but are comforted in our faith in the one whose birth we celebrate this evening. May we always find hope in the peace of knowing Christ.

And because we miss him so very much it was very ‘hard’ to do, as Terri said earlier, but we are blessed by the gift that was given to us in our son.

Justin Jackson, ora pro nobis.