Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone!  We hope that your time over the Holidays is beautiful and full of all the good things of God.  Jesus’ birth is worth celebrating, and celebrating big time!  We are so blessed to know our Lord and to be living under the grace, love and mercy that is found in knowing him.  Emmanuel, God is with us.  Merry Christmas!

We watched the end of “Its a Wonderful Life” as we were putting presents under the tree on Christmas Eve.  The main character George Bailey had lost all hope, until an angel visited him and he got to see some of the good he had done in his life, even though he felt like a failure.  He was worth so much to God and so many people.  But he didn’t feel like it.  The end of the movie is so beautiful.  When he comes back to reality, he chases down his family and hugs them and loves them with so much joy (even though the bankers are in his living room to take everything he owns).  Then, the best part of the movie….the entire town had heard “George Bailey was in trouble” and they ushered into his house one by one.  They filled his living room and poured offerings onto his table, singing songs and laughing along with George, his wife and his children.  A house full of Joy.

I imagine we all have someone we come across that is in need.  In a time so often focused on material things, let’s try to bring Joy this Christmas season.  Let’s be part of that line of people lining up to give, lining up to bring Joy to somebody else’s life.  In the book of Acts the earliest Christians quoted Jesus’ words, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”   George Bailey is not a real person, and I know it is just a movie.  But, the thing that made me tear up wasn’t that his livelihood was being saved.  It was the joy that each person had glowing on their face as they came to give instead of receive.  It really was so beautiful watching them all sing and dance and drink together in George’s living room.

Joy.  It is for all of us.

Thank you Jesus for giving it all, so that we might know how to live.

Merry Christmas!