Friday, December 23, 2011
God With Us
Christmas celebrates the union of the divine with humanity. Mary, a virgin, carries God's Son in her womb for nine months. Jesus, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, is born in a lowly manger. Shepherds accustomed to the gritty reality of tending sheep in the cold and hostile outdoors are visited by a heavenly choir. And over the place where the baby Jesus lay, nourished and warmed by His human mother's breast, there is cast the long, dark shadow of the cross. This is Emmanuel. God becoming a man. God with us.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Seventy-One Christmases
This is number 71 for me.
The celebration of Christmas has changed since I was a small boy in Windsor, Ontario. I celebrated Christmases numbers one through ten in that small brick house I wrote about in Windsor’s Child. In those ten Christmases I saw Christmas as a time of colored lights which frequently did not work, of a tree my dad set up in the living room and decorated, and of colorfully wrapped gifts for my sisters and me under that tree. I knew the story about Santa Claus, and I also knew the other story, about the baby born in a manger. But those stories had a hard time competing with all the goodies that were revealed when we ripped away all that colorful paper on Christmas morning.
My next eighteen Christmases were spent in Lincoln Park, Michigan, a Detroit suburb to which my family moved in the summer of 1951.. I was ten years old for the first of those Lincoln Park Christmases, and 27 on the last one. Quite a lot changed in me and in my life during those eighteen Christmases. Two very significant changes took place, the first in the year of the seventh Lincoln Park Christmas, and the second three days after the final Christmas in that city.
Two Christmases in Grand Rapids, MI, and four in Flint, MI, followed in rapid succession, even though I usually was not in either of those cities on December 25 itself. Sometimes I was back in Lincoln Park. Sometimes I was in Indianapolis, IN.
A long stretch of Christmases, twenty-one of them, to be exact, took place in the small north central Illinois town of Oglesby. Here, too, some of those Christmases were spent in Lincoln Park, and some in Indianapolis, but many of them were spent there in Oglesby.
Then came sixteen Christmases in Columbus, OH. And, Lord willing, in a few days I will celebrate my seventeenth Christmas in Columbus. If you add them all up, that is 71 Christmases I have celebrated in my seventy years on this planet.
So what? Who cares? No one, really. But here is an observation from one who has been around the Christmas block more than a few times.
It was shortly before my seventeenth Christmas, in 1957. I was 17 years old, a senior at Lincoln Park High School. I came to know Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. That was the first Christmas in which I understand why it was important for me to celebrate Christmas. It helped me to focus on why Jesus saved me. He wanted me to use Christmas and every other opportunity I could to share with others why He came to this sin-pocked world and died on a cross to provide forgiveness and salvation to all who would believe. Certainly, the ultimate Christmas gift.
My second important life-changing event came three days after my twenty-eighth Christmas. On
December 28, 1968, I received one of the best Christmas presents I have ever received, when my beautiful bride, Linda, and I were married in suburban Indianapolis, IN. Now I was the one who was on the giving side of Christmas celebration. I had a wife, and soon we had three beautiful daughters to provide Christmas for. And more importantly, we had three beautiful daughters with whom to share the saving love of Jesus Christ.
Number 71 will be here in a few days. We will be with our three daughters, their husbands and the eleven grandchildren the three couples have provided us. And Jesus will very much be a part of our celebration. All three daughters know Jesus as Savior. All three sons-in-law know Jesus. And the older grandchildren know Jesus. The younger ones have not yet reached the age they can understand how to trust Jesus as Savior.
If the Lord blesses me with several more Christmases, I look forward to the time when all 19 of us, from the oldest (me) to the youngest (Juliet) have all trusted Jesus for eternal life. I know now that Christmas is not about colored lights and colorfully-wrapped Christmas gifts. It is not about where it is celebrated. It is not about gift exchanges.
It is about Jesus. It is about Jesus only.
Pictured: The home in which my family lived in the 1940s in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
The celebration of Christmas has changed since I was a small boy in Windsor, Ontario. I celebrated Christmases numbers one through ten in that small brick house I wrote about in Windsor’s Child. In those ten Christmases I saw Christmas as a time of colored lights which frequently did not work, of a tree my dad set up in the living room and decorated, and of colorfully wrapped gifts for my sisters and me under that tree. I knew the story about Santa Claus, and I also knew the other story, about the baby born in a manger. But those stories had a hard time competing with all the goodies that were revealed when we ripped away all that colorful paper on Christmas morning.
Two Christmases in Grand Rapids, MI, and four in Flint, MI, followed in rapid succession, even though I usually was not in either of those cities on December 25 itself. Sometimes I was back in Lincoln Park. Sometimes I was in Indianapolis, IN.
A long stretch of Christmases, twenty-one of them, to be exact, took place in the small north central Illinois town of Oglesby. Here, too, some of those Christmases were spent in Lincoln Park, and some in Indianapolis, but many of them were spent there in Oglesby.
Then came sixteen Christmases in Columbus, OH. And, Lord willing, in a few days I will celebrate my seventeenth Christmas in Columbus. If you add them all up, that is 71 Christmases I have celebrated in my seventy years on this planet.
So what? Who cares? No one, really. But here is an observation from one who has been around the Christmas block more than a few times.
It was shortly before my seventeenth Christmas, in 1957. I was 17 years old, a senior at Lincoln Park High School. I came to know Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. That was the first Christmas in which I understand why it was important for me to celebrate Christmas. It helped me to focus on why Jesus saved me. He wanted me to use Christmas and every other opportunity I could to share with others why He came to this sin-pocked world and died on a cross to provide forgiveness and salvation to all who would believe. Certainly, the ultimate Christmas gift.
My second important life-changing event came three days after my twenty-eighth Christmas. On
December 28, 1968, I received one of the best Christmas presents I have ever received, when my beautiful bride, Linda, and I were married in suburban Indianapolis, IN. Now I was the one who was on the giving side of Christmas celebration. I had a wife, and soon we had three beautiful daughters to provide Christmas for. And more importantly, we had three beautiful daughters with whom to share the saving love of Jesus Christ.
Number 71 will be here in a few days. We will be with our three daughters, their husbands and the eleven grandchildren the three couples have provided us. And Jesus will very much be a part of our celebration. All three daughters know Jesus as Savior. All three sons-in-law know Jesus. And the older grandchildren know Jesus. The younger ones have not yet reached the age they can understand how to trust Jesus as Savior.
If the Lord blesses me with several more Christmases, I look forward to the time when all 19 of us, from the oldest (me) to the youngest (Juliet) have all trusted Jesus for eternal life. I know now that Christmas is not about colored lights and colorfully-wrapped Christmas gifts. It is not about where it is celebrated. It is not about gift exchanges.
It is about Jesus. It is about Jesus only.
Pictured: The home in which my family lived in the 1940s in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
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