Thanks Brent. Hope you have a good holiday.

Brent

That Christmas, or rather the memories that stay with us of Christmases past, come to be what is significant of the holiday for each of us.

I recall, one Christmas, where all us kids got was a small bag of fireworks. Fireworks?! To us it was still a fun time, especially blowing up stuff with said fireworks, no thought to the significance of what caused these presents for us…..money troubles perhaps…..or perhaps my Chinese parents’ not really embracing the traditions of a holiday foreign to them as kids. I never found out and can only wonder.

Thanks, I hope your Christmas was as good as possible for you and yours.

I have to add, that in my life, I’ve noticed, since my teenage years, an emptiness that appears around Christmas. I see it through the clamoring advertisements trying to convince us that more stuff will help us discover the true meaning of Christmas. I see it in the eyes of those who have bought-into this frenzy, camping for days outside a box-store to get a deal on a television set, or spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need. I’m guilty of all of that (except camping outside a box-store) as well and that’s why I can see it in those around me.

I have come to know the peace of Christmas, the peace I longed for all those years ago (I’m 63 now) and that peace is in the person of Jesus Christ, the baby that Christmas celebrates, at least it used to be about Him. In the 2,000 years since his birth, we’ve moved so far from simple faith to an intellectual view of life, that we’ve lost sight of our loving Creator and His incredible gift to us, His own son, who not only was born for us (Christmas), but who died for us (Easter) to bring us back to our loving Father.

Tom Hanks said it well in his wonderful movie: The Polar Express when, as the conductor, he told the boy: “The true meaning of Christmas is in your heart.” Our hearts will always have some emptiness as a result of wounds we’ve received, dreams that have been shattered or abandoned and our fallen world, less now, than the perfect place God made. Less, because of our movement away from Him which Jesus came to resolve. The further toward Him I move, the less emptiness I have and I wanted to share that with you and your readers, thanks for the opportunity to do that, and Merry Christmas!

Will

This post really spoke to my heart. Most of your posts do. But this one did in particular. I appreciate it and your blog.

Steel

No more cold hands for you. There’s no telling how far you’ll roam now 🙂