Christmas

A Christmas devo sent to me, i really liked it. . .
God Bless!
~your sister in Christ, Erin

God so loved the world, He gave his only Son. John 3:16a

In ten words this verse tells us what God is like, who Jesus is, and
how much God cares for each of us and the world.
Without this message our planet and its people would be floating in
space and we would know only that we exist. The book of Genesis
tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. Now in John
3:16 we are told that God not only created the world, but that God
loved it and sent his Son to show how much God cared for it.
This is such a mind stretching idea that we occasionally need a
personal experience to make it sink in.
Henry Carter tells the following story that helped me sense how God
reaches out to us. He is a minister and supervisor of a home for
emotionally disturbed children.

I was working feverishly on my Christmas sermon---the hardest time
in any minister's year to find something fresh to say---when the
floor mother appeared at the study door. Another crisis upstairs.
Christmas Eve is a difficult day for the emotionally disturbed
children in our church home. Three-quarters of them go home at least
over night and the ones who remain react to to empty beds and the
changed routine.
I followed her up the stairs, chafing inwardly at the repeated
interruptions. This time it was Tommy. He had crawled under a bed
and refused to some out. The woman pointed to one of the six cots in
the small dormitory. Not a hair or a toe showed beneath it. so I
addressed myself to the cowboys and bucking broncos on the
bedspread. I talked about the brightly lighted tree in the church
vestibule next door and the packages underneath it and all the other
good things waiting for him out beyond that bed.
No answer.
Still fretting at the time this was costing, I dropped to my hands
and knees and lifted the spread. Two enormous blue eyes met mine.
Tommy was eight, but looked like a five-year-old. It would have been
no effort at all simply to pull him out. But it wasn't pulling that
Tommy needed---it was trust and a sense of deciding things on his own
initiative. So, crouched there on all fours, I launched into the
menu of the special Christmas Eve supper to be offered after the
service. I told him about the stocking with his name on it, provided
by the women's society.
Silence. There was no indication that he either heard or cared
about Christmas.
And at last, because I could think of no other way to make contact,
I got down on my stomach and wriggled in beside him, bedsprings
snagging my suit jacket. For what seemed a long time I lay there
with my cheek pressed against the floor. At first I talked about the
big wreath above the alter and the candles in the windows. I
reminded him of the carol he and the other children were going to
sing. Than I ran out of things to say and simply waited there beside
him.
And as I waited, a small, chilled hand crept into mine.
"You know, Tommy," I said after a bit, "it's kind of close quarters
under here. Let's you and me go out where we can stand up."
And so we did, but slowly, in no hurry. All the pressure had gone
from my day, because, you see, I had my Christmas sermon. Flattened
there on the floor I realized I had been given a new glimpse of the
mystery of this season.
Hadn't God called us, too, as I'd called Tommy, from far above us?
With His stars and mountains, His whole majestic creation, hadn't He
pleaded with us to love Him, to enjoy the universe He gave us?
And when we would not listen, He had drawn closer. Through prophets
and lawgivers and holy men, He spoke with us face-to-face.
But it was not until that first Christmas, until God stooped to
earth itself, until He took our very place and came to dwell with us
in our loneliness and alienation, that we, like Tommy, dared to
stretch out our hands to take hold of love.

PRAYER: Remind us, O God, that you are reaching out to us during
final exams, during the joyous times of homecoming, when we are on
the mountain top of joy and also when we go through the valley of
sorrow and death. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in
thee tonight. We prayer in Jesus' name, who is the only Son you gave.

Yours,
Ron Erickson