I created this section of my website just to get and KEEP you in the Christmas spirit all year long! I love you my dear friends! 💖
One Christmas when I was 5 years old (and I remember this like it was yesterday) my dad was sitting of the living room listening to Christmas music on the radio. I don't know why but the angelic words and music of this timeless carol arrested my thoughts...As I turned to look at my dad an angel in a flowing white gown with wings that almost touched the ceiling, stood behind my dad as if watching over him! I wasn't frightened in the least but when I said "Daddy, there's an angel behind you." he told me later that he was almost afraid to turn around because I was so convincing! But when he turned, he couldn't see it but I still could for what seemed like several minutes but it was probably only a few seconds and then it faded away. Why did it appear to me and not dad and why have I remembered that encounter for more than 70 years??? I don't know unless it was to remind me of the timeless message of the First Noel...
…Something has been on my mind today and I just can’t shake it. Christmas is for most of us the most joyous time of year…From the warm, friendly aire of the shoppers in the bright and cheery stores to the eager anticipation of family gatherings with the exchange of gifts and the warmth of relationships that bind us together, Christmas should be a time of great joy. But I’ve been reminded all day that for some, that’s not the case. For some, and many more than I like to think, it’s a time to be dreaded…a time when the warmth and good will of Christmas is obscured by loneliness, heartache and isolation. Another year has come and gone and so have relationships, people and things we love. If I could take away the hurt and those things that make Christmas so unbearable, I would, but let me share one simple truth with you that I learned a long time ago…one that has seen me through many a tough and trying time, (even a Christmas or two), and one that I’m sure will you as well. When we think we’re all alone and our situation is unique among all the circumstances life has to offer, a simple truth emerges if only we have eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart to believe. The Christmas story is unique and glorious beyond our grandest imagination. It assures us in the most marvelous way possible that we, in spite of our circumstances, are loved…that we are, like the Son of God who was born in a manger, a masterpiece…a special creation fresh from the hand of God! And even though Christmas may present each of us with challenges in their own unique ways, the God who created you...loves you beyond your wildest dreams and demonstrated that so humbly by giving His most precious possession to mankind to live and die a most horrible death in our behalf. Do you think it might have hurt the heart of God, that even He might have for a moment, felt the alienation and loneliness of separation from His Son when the blood poured from His broken body on a tree that should rightly have been reserved for us? Don’t you think that when he pulled the veil between Himself and His Son and heard Him cry “It is finished!” that His heart didn’t weep for the pain inflicted upon His little boy? When God sent His most precious gift to this world, He demonstrated in a most tangible way that He cares for each and every one of us and that He above all others can identify with us in our loneliness, pain and suffering. As I said, if I could take away your pain this Christmas, I would…But Jesus has already done that for you if you will ONLY BELIEVE…Believe that you are NEVER alone…that God who created you, is always there like a loving, good, good Father to comfort, console and hold you near His heart. I love you but I could never begin to love and care for you like He does! May God Bless you and yours with the most wonderful and the most Merry Christmas of all!
A Christmas Thought...
When Mary asked the angel how this could happen since she'd never been with a man, she received an answer that has baffled the mind of man for over two thousand years...Mary’s question was logical. She asked the same question Zacharias asked (Luke 1:18), but his question was asked in skeptical unbelief, and her question was asked in wonder-filled faith. Gabriel told her that the power of the Highest, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, would overshadow her.
The word overshadow means “to cover with a cloud,” as in the cloud of Shekinah glory that covered the Temple in the wilderness of Sinai (Exodus 16:10, 19:9, 24:16, 34:5, 40:34). This cloud was a visible manifestation of the glory and presence of God which meant that the same power of God that was with Moses, Samson and others in the Old Testament was now going to do a unique work in the life of this peasant girl. Jesus's birth was normal but his conception was miraculous. He would be Holy (different from all others) from conception to death and He would be called the "Son of God".
This doesn’t have the same impact on us today because of our unfamiliarity with the idea of being a Son of God. But Mary (and all other Jewish people from her culture) knew what this meant: this child would be equal to God (John 5:18). Jesus did not become the Son of God; He was called the Son of God, recognizing His nature as the God-man from all eternity...
Mary would have a son and He would be God! 💖
My Christmas Gift to You!
When the archangel Gabriel told Mary without hesitation or doubt that her son would be "great" he meant that no one had ever or would ever be as worthy or honorable as her son...When he told her that God the Father would give Him the throne of his father David he presented the most comforting Messianic hope imaginable for the Jewish people who would see a direct descendent of their most honored King once again upon the throne of Israel during His earthly (1,000 year) reign...And when Gabriel told Mary that her son would reign forever over the House of Israel in an everlasting kingdom he solidified and unified into one every Messianic prophecy and hope for the entire human race upon a child that she would conceive and that His kingdom would last throughout eternity!
For a fourteen or fifteen year old girl to receive a message like this from a source such as this must have been overwhelming to say the least! And the Scripture said years later that she kept all this in her heart...What total submission to the will of God...what total humility and what an awesome example she is to all of us...Yes she was indeed blessed!...
So am I to have friends like you that I can share these Christmas messages with! 😊
I Love you all! ❤️️
Yesterday we witnessed the long prophesied visit of the angel Gabriel to the virgin Mary at her home in Nazareth...Most heavenly visits to human beings bring about great terror and often end with the subject of the visit on their faces upon the ground. Anticipating Mary's reaction Gabriel warned Mary not to be afraid because she had found "favor with God". Mary, like us, had no other qualification to be the recipient of an angelic visit except by and for the grace of God...And Mary, like us, can only attain and enjoy the fullness of life on this earth as we humbly place our lives in His hands... What a testimony from the Creator of heaven and earth...to be found in favor with God! In the air there's a feeling of Christmas 🎶 ...Love ya'll! 💖
Everything about Jesus was planned and orchestrated by God. Nothing in His life on this earth happened by chance. God purposefully planned even the most minute details in the life of Jesus Christ.
Another one of those "little" details was the place of His birth. He was born in the insignificant little Judean village of Bethlehem. The Old Testament prophet Micah wrote almost 700 years before "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." (5:2)
Isn't it just a little amazing that Israel's greatest king David was promised a descendent who would reign upon his throne forever and who would also come from Bethlehem? And isn't it just a little too much to be coincidental that God would use a pagan emperor like Caesar Augustus to decree that Mary and Joseph would have to return to the little village of Bethlehem because it was Joseph's hometown of all the little villages in Israel?
I could go on all night and not even scratch the surface of the proofs that "Mary's little lamb" was just that..."The Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." (John 1:29)...Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to be taxed (and a short time later have Jesus). It happened that way because God made it happen that way.
We also know from Scripture that God is just as interested in the details of our life and has a divine plan for each one of us because He is..."not willing that any should perish , but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9b) God wants you to know Him as well as He knows you and to have a rich, full and blessed relationship with Him.
Why not bless the Christ child whose birth we'll celebrate in just a couple of weeks by acknowledging Him for who He is and for why he came...To save sinners of which I am most guilty!
Have a most blessed evening in the Lord my dear friends! 💖
Angels...Continually ministering in the presence of Almighty God until they were dispatched with a message that would change our world forever!...Isn't it ironic that the greatest and most powerful of God's creation would make an announcement to lowly shepherds, who themselves were the outcasts of society, the birth of a King...And not just any King but the King of all creation, the King of Glory, the King of righteousness, the Son of God and the King of who's kingdom there would be no end! Bless you all in that name that's above all others...sweet Jesus!
Only with the eye of an artist, the mind of a poet and a heart near to God can such beautiful and immortal words be born...May our dear Lord Jesus bless you all this evening with eyes to see, minds to understand and hearts to sense the magnitude of what happened on that midnight clear two thousand years ago...
I created this card from a picture of our tree to wish you a very Merry Christmas season! 🤩