Christmas Joy

There is nothing quite like Christmas, is there? While the hype and the craziness that surround the season can overwhelm us, there is something about Christmas that draws us all in. We sing the songs and hear the stories as we've done for years and years. We trudge through the snow to spend time with family and friends.

Christmas. We gather together all over the world to celebrate the birth of Christ, the coming of a savior into a world that so desperately needs saving. We sing the hymns, old and new, that tell the story we know so well. Christmas.

There is something almost magic about Christmas. The festiveness, the gatherings, the food, the music, the laughter, the joy. It is truly a time to celebrate.

But at Christmastime, we remember as well that the story doesn't end in the manger. It begins in the manger. Jesus comes as a child at Christmas but the Nativity is only the beginning. Christmas is a time to celebrate what we know is coming. We've come through Advent, full of anticipation and waiting and now we've arrived at Christmas. The wait for the savior is over. But the wait for his return still continues. Christmas reminds us that Christ came into the world and lives among us, even as we live in the promise of his return one day.

My family lives in a parsonage that's on almost 60 acres of land out in the Iowa country. One of my favorite Christmas traditions, perhaps my favorite, is something simple that happens on our farm each Christmas eve. Growing up, my brother, dad and I would go out to the barn after Christmas dinner to bed down the animals and give them some extra food, all in preparation for what would happen later in the night.

The story is that on Christmas Eve, the animals in the barn can talk. They gather together to tell the story, The Story, of what happened on the first Christmas so long ago. The animals remember the part those first animals played in the Nativity and they tell the story to each other. As I've gotten older and the logical part of my brain has grown, I've learned a lot about the world and about how things work. This logical part of my brain tells me that such a thing is not possible and that this is just a story told to children. But another part of me wants to sneak down to the barn on Christmas Eve and put my ear up to the door and hear the soft voices of the goats, whispering to each other the story of the One who came to earth and slept in a manger so long ago.

Blessed Christmas.

Soli Deo Gloria!
Amy