Here comes Christmas

This the Season of Nativity sets, lighted trees, shopping, cookies, and of course...Christmas cards. My Christmas cards did not turn out like I was hoping. The picture could have been lighter. Despite my resolve to think more about the 63 million people in the world who do not have access to uncontaminated drinking water than my first world problems, I wonder how my card will look in the stack of brush up, zoom in, take 100 pictures in a minute circle that I happen to live in. Maybe next year I will hire a professional. Then again, wouldn't 63 million people like a less than perfect drink of perfectly ingestible water, let alone a picture card, maybe I don't need the card that stacks the top. I wonder what Mary and Joseph's card would have looked like had they had cameras happens to have been invented. I doubt the lighting would have been that great in the stable. Surely the picture would not have captured the smells of the night, stable scent, a bit different from the Pine Needle and Christmas Pie candles we burn. And yet, there in the stable on that dark night, a child was born...and the whole world received a gift...the opportunity to be born again...to a life to beautiful to be captured on any Christmas card.

I do enjoy Christmas cards. I do think it's nice if you can capture at least someone on your card smiling. But the best Christmas isn't one in which your card is nearly picture perfect, it is a Christmas in which your heart is. A Christmas in which you ponder not Christmas cards, but the child of Christmas. In the imperfections of our celebrations, God’s perfect plan for redemption still shines. I hope your Christmas and your cards turn out like you hope, but more so I hope your heart does. Merry Christmas !