As I write this, the first snowfall of the year has just taken place. I can’t say that is a bad thing. Having grown up in Calgary, you know it’s coming, you just never really know when. It’s a pretty sure thing here that we’ll have a white Christmas. I can only remember a few over the many years that it was brown, and those were very warm winters. We lived in Oklahoma for two years and it was the first place we’d lived where there were no clear seasons. It went from super hot and humid summers to a sort of grey mushy wet winter. Maybe it snowed but usually, it didn’t. Not much chance for a white Christmas. That was the first place we lived where we realized we actually liked having 4 seasons!
I have always liked the Christmas season. When we were first married I was somewhat put off by the glitz and glamour and commercialization of it all. But the Lord began to turn my heart one year to see the good in it rather than the bad. All the attention to the lights and special displays that get put up at this time of year He reminded me that Christmas is a time of lights and that His Son Jesus was sent as the light of the world. So I started to see it that way. It’s a celebration of HIS light. All the buying of presents and spending money, often that people don’t have, was people going out of their way, even into debt, to do something nice for someone else. WOW! The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of giving… and our Father was the first one to do it.
There are few delights greater to a parent than seeing their young kids’ faces on Christmas morning opening presents! With all that this old world is going through, and it looks like there’s more yet to come, isn’t it wonderful to remember each year that our celebration of Jesus’ birth has outlasted 2000 years of world problems and His kingdom is greater now than at any other time in history.
Take courage this Christmas season… the words of the old hymn are still the same.
Joy to the world the Lord has come let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare Him room and heaven and nature sing and heaven and nature sing and heaven and heaven and nature sing!
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