Boomerangs, according to G. K. Chesterton, are “things that return.” He names sleep and a new day as boomerang blessings–something we experience which comes back to us to experience again. No matter how many times we go to sleep and wake up again, we continue to enjoy those recurring cycles.

In Winter Fire: Christmas with G. K. Chesterton, Ryan Whitaker Smith comments that feasts in the Jewish calendar were like boomerangs, recurring reminders of God’s grace in delivering and providing for His people. He quotes Chesterton again:

It is the very essence of a festival that it breaks upon one brilliantly and abruptly, that at one moment the great day is not and the next moment the great day is . . . The thing is done at a particular time so that people may be conscious of a particular truth; as is the case with all ceremonial observances, such as the Silence of Armistice Day or the signal of a salute with the guns or the sudden noise of bells for the New Year. They are all meant to fix the mind upon the fact of the feast or memorial, and suggest that a passing moment has a meaning when it would otherwise be meaningless (pp. 68-69).

Whitaker goes on to say, “As the Israelites’ festivals were a perpetual retelling of the same story, so are our Christian traditions a form of continually re-grounding ourselves in the narrative of redemption. The consistent ‘return of old things in new times,’ Chesterton tells us, . . . . the regularity of our holiday rituals is a way of maintaining godly sanity in an unstable and unpredictable world” (p. 56).

Our modern church and personal calendars may not follow the feasts given Israel in the Old Testament. But regular observances with their symbols and rituals remind us of great truths.

Christmas reminds us:

We need a Savior. “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” Matthew 1:21).

God loves us enough to rescue us at great cost to Himself. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).

God’s timing is perfect. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

And so much more.

May the “boomerang blessing” of Christmas never be stale or empty, but rather a regular reminder that God loved us enough to send His Son to be our Savior, to die for our sins so we could become His.

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