Tuesday, December 14, 2021

God's gift

As a child, I loved the smells of this time of year.  In my memory, it always seemed to get cold in December (even though it rarely snowed in Houston). But the coldness brought with it the smell that somewhere, someone was burning wood.  The idea of campfires and fireplaces and cords of wood permeates the season.  The smells and temperature (not so much the wall calendar) pointed to carol singing in the car on the way to celebrate Christmas with my dispersed families in New Braunfels, Corpus Christi, and Old Ocean, Texas.

I love Christmas. I always have.  Presents were always wonderful to get, but I don’t remember most of them.  What I remember and carry with me to this day are family gatherings in Madisonville and Lake Conroe, Brach’s candy wreaths, huge feasts of ham, turkey, and venison, cream cheese on celery stalks, and putting whole black olives on my fingers to eat them one-by-one.  Then followed Christmas games and pranks, charades with the adults and children playing together. 

I remember the current girlfriends of uncles initiated into the family through pranks at Christmas.  I always assumed they would become a part of the family until they didn’t show up the following year.  Love is complicated.

At the shopping mall the signage of the stores used words like, Joy, Peace, Light, Hope, Love…great words!  I believe in these words.

But none of this compares to the incomprehensible depth of what God accomplished at the Incarnation and birth of his Son.  The God and Creator of the Universe stepped into his creation in the most common way.  Your Maker lowered himself to his creatures to bring us up to where he exists.  This simple fact alone should change us, let alone his acts on Calvary.  More than anything else, Christmas is the time to contemplate and be transformed by the depth of God's gift to you.  Let those great words become manifest in your life daily, not just annually.


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