I’m off on a week of vacation to tropical, exotic Jeffersonville, Indiana, to visit our family and have our second Christmas celebration. I pray you all have a safe and happy New Year celebration!

SCRIPTURE – Luke 2:41-52

 Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

SERMON
“Being Aware of God’s Presents”
Luke 2:41-52
Kory Wilcoxson

Have you ever misplaced your child? I’m not asking if you’ve wanted to do that; I think I know the answer to that. But have you ever just completely lost track of your child?

Yes, I’ll step up and claim the Bad Parent Award today. Sydney was two at the time. I swore she was right beside me. I set her down and told her not to move, that the parking lot was full and there were cars all around and it was dark. The box I was lifting into my car was heavy, but I only looked away for a second. When I looked down, she was gone. Just that quickly, and my child was no longer by my side, no longer safe from the shoppers speeding to get the open parking spaces. I looked around franticly, waiting to hear screeching tires. And then I saw her, waddling toward the store she knew Mommy was in. Somehow, she had crossed one aisle in the parking lot and was headed for another. I swooped her up in my arms, and she looked at me with her innocent smile and said, “I go see Mommy!”, like it was the most natural explanation for running off. She was only gone five seconds, and yet for me, it felt like two lifetimes.

So I can only imagine how Mary and Joseph felt in this story when they realized Jesus was no longer by their side. They were coming back from a significant family vacation, a five-day journey to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover. This year’s trip was made even more significant by the fact that Jesus was 12 years old, meaning it was his first year to be considered an adult under Jewish law. In other words, this was his first real Passover, a true rite of passage for him into adulthood. For us, it would be like our first communion after baptism, stretched out over the course of a week and marked by great feasts and celebrations.

So he does what any 12-year-old boy would do in the big city as a newly christened adult: he tunes out his parents and goes exploring. If they would have had iPods back then, his earplugs would have been firmly in place. Mary and Joseph look away for a second, and before they know it, they’ve lost Jesus.

Don’t be too quick to blame them. At first, they may sound like negligent parents, but before you call Child Protective Services, consider this: in those days, it was customary for the women and men to travel separately as they journeyed. The group of women would leave earlier in the day, on one end of the caravan, and the men would bring up the other end of the caravan, meeting the women later in the evening at the place of encampment. Chances are Mary thought he was with Joseph, and Joseph thought he was with Mary. “Where’s Jesus?” “Isn’t he with you?” “I thought he was with YOU!”

Thankfully, their story has a happy ending. A return to Jerusalem and desperate search ends in the Temple, where Jesus sat amongst the priests and scribes, listening and asking questions, learning from his elders. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph were “astonished,” a mixture of surprise and relief and anger. Mary turns on her mother voice, “Why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” We told you to stay by our side, we told you not to stray. Don’t you know what could have happened to you?

Jesus’ response to Mary is one of the most significant passages in the New Testament. Not only is it the first time he speaks in Luke’s Gospel, but it is his first acknowledgement of who he is, and who he is to be. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” “My father’s house” is a loose translation of the original Hebrew. Scholars also have translated it to mean “in his realm, by his side, about his business,” as in, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” Notice the contrast between Mary’s use of father, meaning Joseph, and Jesus’ use of Father, capital F, meaning God. With this statement, we begin to get a sense of who this Jesus really is.

This story is a spiritual coming of age for Jesus. I appreciate Luke and the other gospel writers’ silence about Jesus’ childhood and adolescence. Other writings of this time period tell stories of Jesus as a child, breathing life into clay pigeons or withering friends who beat him at games. But I prefer the authorized biography, which says nothing at all about Jesus the teenager, except for this pivotal story. It leaves to our imagination Jesus’ growing in wisdom and stature, growing in the knowledge of who he is as a person and who he is as the son of God.

We have all been given that same gift by God, the opportunity to grow in the knowledge of who we are and who we were created to be. That may sound like standard preacher talk, but I want to invite you to think about what that means. Do you ever spend time thinking about who you are, that God has created you and breathed life into you and blessed you with a purpose? Or by this time in life is that fact taken for granted or ignored, a forgotten or passing thought in the midst of more pressing realizations like strange noises in your car’s engine and orthodontists’ bills? Has that gift gone unopened?

Let me tell you a story. A working mother was trying to provide a decent Christmas for her six children. Her husband was a truck driver, working long hours and gone for weeks at a time, which meant she was left to raise them virtually by herself. Each year Christmas was a struggle, but this year was especially tough. Money seemed tighter than usual, and the kids’ lists for Santa seemed longer than usual. She tried to decorate the house in the Christmas spirit, but things didn’t seem to come together for her. Their tree looked like a piece of kindling, half the ornaments were broken, several strands of lights didn’t work, her favorite nativity scene given to her by her grandmother was missing a piece. It was like something, or everything, was conspiring against her.

As if this weren’t enough stress for her to deal with, she was worried about her 5-year old, Joey. He always marched to a beat slightly different than that of the rest of the children, but in the past weeks he’d seemed more distant than usual. One day, he was walking around the house with a wistful half-grin on his face. His mom asked him, “Joey, are you OK? What are you up to?” “Oh, nothing,” he said with that smile on his face. His mom wanted to follow up, but the 2-year-old needed a diaper change, and besides, Joey didn’t seem to be hurting anyone, so she dropped it.

On Christmas morning, she watched the present-opening frenzy with joy and a touch of sadness that she couldn’t do more for her kids. Then she noticed Joey disappearing behind the tree and reappearing with seven presents he had obviously wrapped himself, one for his mother, father, and each of his siblings. She was baffled. Joey wasn’t a crafts kind of person, he wouldn’t have made them all presents. And he certainly didn’t have money to buy gifts for everyone. So what was this?

As the kids began opening their presents from Joey, she suddenly understood. Joey’s brother Tommy had had to borrow cleats for Little League this past summer because he lost his. His present was his missing cleats that Joey had found in the back of the closet. Joey gave his sister Britney her favorite doll she had misplaced last month when she became preoccupied with another toy. All the other presents were things they already owned, but had lost or misplaced during the course of the year. The family was more excited about receiving these recycled presents than they were their new ones. There’s a special kind of joy in finding something you thought you lost.

Then Joey’s mother opened her gift. It was the piece missing from her grandmother’s nativity set, the baby Jesus, which had gotten buried under a stack of paperwork and junk mail. At that moment, the pathetic tree and meager number of presents were forgotten, replaced instead by her son’s gift, a gift she already owned, given to her anew to enjoy and appreciate.

God has already given us the greatest gift imaginable, the gift of life and love, made known definitively to us through his son, Jesus Christ. We were created by God to love and serve God, but somewhere along the line, we may have lost track of that. We didn’t do it intentionally, but we let it get away from us just the same. Maybe it was thrown in a closet and forgotten. Maybe we misplaced it when we became preoccupied with other priorities. Maybe we let it get buried under a stack of paperwork and to-do lists. For whatever reason, we’ve lost our understanding of the magnitude of the gift of God’s love, of our own God-createdness.

So God has patiently searched the nooks and crannies of our lives, looking in the dark, forgotten places and under the stacks of responsibilities, and given us, once again, the present we already own. God wrapped it up in swaddling clothes, placed it in a manger, and said, “Here, this is for you.”

Can you imagine how Mary and Joseph felt when they held Jesus for the first time after finding him in the temple? Can you imagine how I felt when I picked up Sydney and held her in my arms? There’s a special kind of joy in finding something you thought you lost. That’s how God feels about us. We may have been lost, but now we are found, found by the One who never stops searching for us and never stops gracing our lives with divine presents. My prayer is that in 2008, you find Jesus again, and the life-changing joy that awaits.

QUESTIONS

1 – What was your favorite Christmas gift this year?

2 – What’s one wish you have for 2008?

Hello, everyone, from snowbound Chicago! We’ve had a couple of different dumpings the last few days, which means lots of shoveling and staying inside to keep warm. Here is this Sunday’s sermon on the reason for Christmas. I hope you have a blessed – and warm! – week.

 SCRIPTURE - I John 4:7-12
 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

SERMON
What’s So Special about Christmas?
#2 – The Reason for Christmas
December 16, 2007

You may have heard the name of Fred Craddock. Dr. Craddock is a preacher and professor in our denomination. He’s written a number of books on preaching, and is generally considered one of the greatest preachers alive today. In fact, Newsweek magazine recently named him one of America’s top preachers.

I’ve read many of Dr. Craddock’s books and sermons. His words are powerful, prophetic, and incredibly insightful. As I was reading, I could just imagine his imposing stature in the pulpit, his deeply sonorous voice, the angelic glow that surrounded him while he commanded the pulpit. But up until a few years ago, I had never heard him preach.

While we were in Kansas City on one of our mission trips, I learned that Dr. Craddock was going to be preaching in the church where we were staying. I was ecstatic! Finally, a chance to see one of the greatest preachers of our time. As worship started, I looked at the people gathered up on the altar, trying to figure out which one was him. I don’t know many women named Fred, so I ruled them out of contention. That left a handful of people, including a short, squat little fella who easily could have been Snow White’s religious dwarf Preachy.

So imagine my surprise when the time came for the sermon and Preachy made his way to the pulpit. I couldn’t see for sure but I imagine there might have been couple phone books back there for him to stand on. And when he spoke, his voice wasn’t deep, sonorous, or mesmerizing. In fact, he sounded a little like Elmer Fudd. But the sermon he preached that day was one of the best I’ve ever heard in my life. Before that day, I thought I knew Fred Craddock, but I didn’t really know him until I was with him.

A few weeks ago we asked the question: What’s the relevance of Christmas? And we answered it by saying that the relevance of Christmas is the fact that God chose to come to earth. That, more than anything else, is what Christmas is all about. That leads us to our second question: Why? Why did God come to earth? What’s the reason for Christmas?

Up until Christ’s birth, God’s people, the Israelites, knew God primarily through stories that were told about him. They heard about Creation and Noah’s Ark and Moses, and they learned about God through those stories: a powerful, majestic, mysterious God who controlled the elements and spoke through burning bushes. As I said a few weeks ago, God was a sacred Other, related to yet separate from the humanity God had created.

God and humans worked to develop their relationship, but because humans were rebellious and sinful, that relationship was tenuous. God sent the Israelites laws for how to live faithful, godly lives, and the Israelites thumbed their noses at God by building golden calves and doing whatever they wanted, not what God wanted.

So God decided to take a different approach. Instead of hoping that we might be able to change our behaviors and attitudes in such a way that we would come up to God’s level, God decided to come down to ours. Being in relationship with us, His creation, was so important to God that he chose to come to earth through Jesus so that we might relate to Him more intimately than ever before. Just as I thought I knew Fred Craddock before I saw him in action, the Israelites thought they knew God. Then they saw him in action.

The reason for Christmas, the reason God came to earth through Jesus, is so that we might know him. In Jesus, we have the embodiment of our Creator. We have God made flesh, God as a human being, who lived among us and showed us what it meant to be fully alive. God, who was once thought of as separate and different and so far above us, is now intimately knowable.

This is important because I think a lot of people are getting the wrong idea about God. They read a book or watch the news and say, “What kind of God would do that? What kind of God would allow that? How can God love me and let this happen?” Or they pick and choose selected parts of scripture and get a distorted view of God as vengeful or capricious or aloof. But that’s not the God I’ve come to know.

There are certain things we can know about God without knowing Jesus. For example, nature tells us a lot about God. When we look around us we can see God’s creativity. When we look at the mountains or hear the waves of the ocean we know God is majestic and powerful. We can look at how the world works or how the system of nature function and know that God is organized. We can look at all the species on earth and know that God likes variety, or look at a child and know God likes beauty. We can the giraffe or the platypus and know God has a sense of humor.

But that kind of knowing has limits. It’s the difference between reading a book by Fred Craddock and hearing him preach. I knew a lot about the man, but I didn’t know the man until I heard his voice and shook his hand and had a conversation with him.

Through Jesus, God has come to earth to speak to us, to embrace us, and to have a conversation. We no longer have to say, “I wonder what God is really like,” because now we know. First, through Jesus, we know God is real. We have evidence of God’s existence through the life of Jesus. We no longer have to wonder if God is up there, because God has come down here.

Through Jesus, we can also learn that God is forgiving. You can’t learn that from nature; you can only know that through what Christ has done for us on the cross. Before Jesus, there was a penalty for disobeying God. God created the law, and said, “If you break this law, there will be consequences.” And the Israelites kept breaking the law and breaking the law until finally God said, “The platypuses never acted like this. There’s got to be a better way.”

So Christ took all the penalty of our sins and took them to the cross with him, where our penalty died along with him. And when he rose three days later, our penalty stayed dead, and in its place was the wonderful grace of forgiveness. God no longer related to us through the do’s and don’ts of the law; he can now relate to us through this gift of forgiveness we have been offered.

Not only can we know God as real and forgiving, but through Jesus we can truly understand what is that the core of God’s nature. John wrote it in his first letter: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Jesus came so that we would know how much God loves us. Why else would he do something so radical, so irrational? Why else would he come to earth in human form and die an innocent man? Because he loves you. He loves you more than you’ll ever understand. You can’t begin to imagine how much God loves you.

Christmas is about that love, and God’s desire to be in relationship with us. But that’s a two-way street. God doesn’t force us to believe in him. What fun would that be? God wants us to choose him, to put him first in our lives over and above all the other competing influences, and Christmas is a reminder of the lengths God will go to let us know that.

I opened my desk drawer the other day so I could get some staples out, which I keep in the way-back of the drawer. When I took the staples out, I saw underneath them a gift certificate to a restaurant that I had been given several Christmases ago. “Merry Christmas, Kory, we hope 1974 is your best year yet!” OK, it wasn’t that old, but it wasn’t brand new, either. I have eaten at that restaurant several times since I was given this gift certificate and could have put it to use. Here was this present, given with love, just sitting in my desk drawer unopened, unused.

Why would anyone receive such a valuable gift, and then not use it or forget about it? That’s the question we can ask each Christmas when we sing about the joy of the Lord coming to us once again. Here comes this great gift, the greatest gift ever given, and yet on Dec. 26 some people will stick him in the back of their desk drawer, underneath the staples, only to be remembered on the occasional Sunday morning and next year around the same time.

If I were to tell you that this year, I know you’re going to get a gift for Christmas that will help with all your problems, heal your deepest hurts, forgive your biggest mistakes, and give you a new sense of purpose and joy, would you open that gift? Or is there something in us that’s afraid of what life would be like if we truly chose God, if we opened ourselves up to God’s love for us?

We can continue living our lives knowing about God. That’s commendable and, more importantly, safe. Or we can choose to know God, to spend time getting to know this baby born in a manger on Christmas. After all, that’s the reason he came in the first place.

QUESTIONS

1 – What’s your most memorable Christmas gift?

2 – What characteristic of God do you feel you understand best?

3 – What characteristic of God do you wish you understood more?

Hello, everybody! Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and I’m starting a sermon series called, “What’s So Special about Christmas?” Thanks to Rick Warren of Saddleback Church for the idea. We’ll be looking at the relevance, reason, and result of the Christmas event. Today is the question is this: Why is Christmas relevant to our lives and our faith? 

SCRIPTURE  John 1:1-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

What’s So Special About Christmas?
#1 – The Relevance of Christmas
Dec. 2, 2007

Well, here we are. It’s Christmas time again. Although the church is only now officially recognizing the start of the Christmas season on this first Sunday of Advent, the retail culture around us has been in the holiday spirit for awhile now. Before long you’ll be able to get your 4^th of July fireworks and your Christmas tree on the same weekend.

During the course of Advent I want us to try and answer this question: What is so special about Christmas? Because I believe we may have forgotten. In the midst of all the other holidays – Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, even Festivus “(for the rest of us!”) – we’ve forgotten the meaning of Christmas. Now, I’m not going to stand up here and “Ba humbug!” at the radio stations who start playing Christmas music in early November. I’m not going to rant and rave about the people who put their Christmas lights up before Thanksgiving. We can throw as big a fit as we want, but some things aren’t going to change. It’s not like if we make enough noise the stores will only put out Christmas items starting Dec. 1, right?

So if we can’t change the culture, we need to ask what we can do to recapture the meaning of Christmas. I wrote in my blog last year about the whole “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” debate. People complain that by not saying “Merry Christmas” we are somehow diluting the meaning of the season.

The basic controversy is that our culture at large is moving away from religious-specific statements like “Merry Christmas!” to more generic, all-inclusive statements like, “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.” I think it was Tommy on the Rugrats who came up with “Merry Christmakwanzaakkuh.” Which of course really ticked off those folks who celebrate the Winter Solstice.

Some say the reason for this shift to a blander seasonal salutation is political correctness. A Christian humor site I subscribe to sent out this version of a season’s greeting: “Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a religion at all.”

In an effort not to offend anyone, we take all the salt out of our language, but sometimes the Christian response can be just as offensive. People bemoan the lack of “Merry Christmas!” signs at Walgreens, and resolutely offer the Christian greeting to grocery clerks in a tone more fit for a battle cry, as if they’re saying, “Merry Christmas – wanna make something of it?”

But in the fighting the war for Christmas, I wonder if we’ve gotten so caught up in the battle that we’ve forgotten what we’re fighting for. We’ve forgotten why Christmas is important in the first place, the relevance of what takes place on Christmas.

Because of that, I have no problems with people wishing me something other than “Merry Christmas.” They can cheerily wish me a ‘Happy Holiday’ until icicles dangle from their nose. I’m fine with the phrase “Merry Christmas” disappearing from our larger culture. In fact, I applaud and encourage it. Why? Because it’s the best chance we have of reclaiming Christmas for what it truly is.

Look, we Christians lost our grip on Christmas a LONG time ago, and no matter how many “Christ is the reason for the season” bumper stickers we produce, we’re never going to forcibly take it back for the culture’s grip. It’s too far gone. Christmas is no more a religious holiday than my wife’s Christmas cookies are a diet food.

But people are still in an uproar about the diminishing of “Merry Christmas.” They say, “Why should it that phrase be offensive? It’s just an innocent holiday hello.” Exactly! That term no longer signifies a religious observance; if anything, it marks the beginning of a consumer season, like the green flag being waved at the Indy 500. People don’t see “Merry Christmas” as having any potential to offend because it doesn’t really mean anything anymore. It’s lost its relevance to the real meaning of Christmas.

But here’s the real reason why I’m happy to give up saying “Merry Christmas” in non-Christian settings. Wouldn’t it be great if we could reclaim Christmas as a primarily Christian celebration? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could say “Merry Christmas” only when we actually meant it in the most joyous, hopeful sense? I say “Happy Holidays” to the 7-11 clerk because I truly hope he has a happy holiday, regardless of whether he is Christian, a Winter Solstician, or celebrates Festivus. But at church, I say “Merry Christmas,” because I want my fellow Christians to truly experience the miracle that Christmas brings for their life and their faith.

What I hope is that the idea of Christmas can be insulated from the culture’s grip. Give them “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings.” They can have it. No one is complaining that “Happy Hanukkah” has lost its meaning, because you hardly ever heard it said in connection with 50% -off sale. We’re not beaten over the head with “only 25 more shopping days until Kwanzaa!” If only “Merry Christmas” could gain that same kind of scarcity. If Christmas begins to disappear from the larger culture, maybe the church can repossess it, wipe off all the tinsel and yucky cultural residue, give it a good spit-shine, and place it back up on the mantle. If we can do that, maybe, just maybe, Christmas could actually be about what it’s supposed to be about.

Which brings me back to the relevance of Christmas. At its core, at its essence, what makes Christmas so special? Yes, it’s the day Jesus was born. But why is that special? What’s the significance of his birth? What makes this event so remarkable in the Jewish history that it not only spawned a completely new religion still observed 2000 years later, but that it also basically recalibrated our understanding of time, resetting the human clock to 0, creating B.C. and A.D.?

It’s simply this: God came to earth. That, more than anything else, is what Christmas is all about. To understand the relevance of that, we have to understand the nature of the God-humanity relationship leading up to that time. From the time of Adam and Eve onward, the human understanding of God was one of a larger-than-life being who was completely separate from humanity. God and humans co-existed, worked together, even conversed, but there was always a distance there, because God was wholly Other. When Moses asked God’s name at the burning bush, God said, “I am who I am,” or more accurately, “I will be who I will be.” In other words, “That’s for me to know. Don’t worry about it, because you wouldn’t understand.”

The basic belief in the Hebrew scriptures was that God was so awesome and powerful that any human being who laid eyes on God would immediately die. God was too glorious and majestic to behold. In fact, God was so sacred, Jews believe you couldn’t even speak His name. God was thought of like the lion Aslan is described in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”: he was by no means safe, but he was good. The Israelites feared God in the most reverent way.

But then comes this strange phenomenon of Christmas. The God of Israel, the God of power and might and even wrath, comes to earth as a little baby. Nobody’s afraid of a baby. Maybe a baby’s diaper, but not a baby! God, who had been wholly Other, wholly separate, completely unknowable, now existed as a human child, soon to become a human adult. He even had a name fraught with meaning: Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”

I remember hearing a story about a little girl who climbed out of bed one night and went into her parents’ room. Her dad woke up and said, “What’s wrong, sweetie?” She said, “I’m scared.” He said, “There’s nothing to be scared of. Remember, God is looking out for you.” “I know,” she said, “but right now I need God with skin on.”

“God with skin on.” That’s the relevance of Christmas: God with us. “Word of the father, now in flesh appearing.” This one event fundamentally changed the nature of our relationship with God. Through Jesus, we can learn things about God’s nature that we never had learned before. Jesus reveals to us what God is really like, and definitively shows us God’s love and mercy for us. Jesus is God’s way of saying, “I know what you are going through, because I’ve been a human, too, who experienced all the things it meant to be alive.” The pain, the grief, the anger, the disappointment, the joy – God knows what all those feel like. He was born like us. He grew up like us. The Word became flesh.

So as we move into the Christmas season, remember the relevance of what we are celebrating. The good news is not that he came, but why he came, and we’ll talk about that next week. But for now, amidst the lights and the ornaments and the shopping and the reindeer, remember – Christmas is about Emmanuel, God with us.

QUESTIONS

1- What’s your favorite thing about Christmas?

2 – Where do you stand on the “Merry Christmas” debate?

3 – Do you do anything during this season to stay anchored in the true meaning of it?