I failed to send Christmas
cards this year. We moved, plus cataract surgery and then Christmas day. So, I want to give you this Christmas card.
Look at the altar and the beautiful
Christmas decorations of the Church. See the tabernacle, flowers, and vestments of
the altar. Place in the center of it the nativity. Imagine in your mind these as picture
on the front of the card.
The verse in the the card is from the reading in Isaiah.
How
beautiful are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace,
bearing good news, announcing salvation, "Your God is King!"
I remember a Christmas card
my family received when I was in the second or third grade. The picture on the
front of the card was a drawing of a window with advent wreath and candles.
Outside the window, snow covered the ground. In the sky was a long and pointed
Christmas star. It was beautiful.
I remember this card because
that year in school the Christmas art project was to make a Christmas cards for
parents. Others children drew Christmas stockings,
Christmas trees, gingerbread men, or Santa and his sleigh. I drew my version of
that Christmas card: a window scene with a candle and star. The
teacher selected my crayon drawing to be displayed with the best art projects.
Fifty years later, I
don’t remember the exact verse in that Christmas card, but, it was about the light came
into the world on Christmas.
God spoke to me in a simple
childlike way in a picture. God speaks to us in ways we can understand. Scripture
says that in times past, God spoke through the prophets; in these days, he has
spoken to us through the Son.
God us his personal
Christmas card. God sends us what we need.
God sent us his word.
In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God. All
things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.
And
the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us and we saw his glory the
glory as of the Father's only Son full of grace and truth.
The word came as Jesus. The
in-the-flesh word of God dwelled among us to experience our reality.
God is right there in the
middle of all this. The Word coming to be among us shows us that God the Father
has a personal interest in us.
Our reality is not always
that beautiful picture on the front of a Christmas card. But the Word of God
allowed us to see His reality: His glory as of the Father's only Son, the Word
of God, full of grace and truth. What a transforming reality that is.
What
came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a Christmas card
that read something like this:
- "If our need had been information, God would have sent us a reporter.”
- “If our need had been technology, God would have sent us an inventor.”
- “If our need had been money, God would have sent us a banker.”
- “Our need is to hear the voice of God and God sent us his Word.”
- “Our need is forgiveness and God sent us a Savior."
Anyone can send us a
Christmas card and many will send us a gift’ but only God truly gives us what
we need. Jesus was sent to complete God’s message of love. As God sent Jesus
into this world, Jesus is then sending us to continue God’s message of love.
He is sending us made in the
beautiful image of God with His message of truth; His message of hope; His
message of forgiveness, love, and salvation.
Jesus is sending us.
We are His Christmas cards; so, be
good, be holy and preach the gospel by the way you live and love. Amen.
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