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December Devotional
The story of Christmas is timeless and
eternal - it spans the memories of every generation
for over 2000 years. Today, in the twenty-first century,
Christmas stirs up not only batches of cookie dough,
but it stirs up batches of Christmas memories as well.
What are your Christmas memories? Maybe some of your
memories are precious ... while others are painful.
Perhaps some of your memories you would like to relive,
while others you wish had never happened at all.
My prayer for you during this season of holly and
pumpkin pie and way too many trips to the mall, is
that your life will become richly entwined with the
only memories of Christmas that really matter.
The smell of the first Christmas was not evergreen
- it was straw and manure mildewing away in an overcrowded,
dirty stable.
The sounds of that first Christmas were not the cha-ching
of a cash register at your favorite store or meaningless
songs about reindeer and elves and trees. The sounds
of that first Christmas were the raw screams of a
young girl giving birth in the midst of a donkey's
brey and an angel's song.
There were no singing children - but there was a baby
crying. There were no malls teeming with holiday shoppers
but there was a hillside where a bunch of rag-tag,
dirty, uneducated shepherds were camping out.
The true Christmas story - the one that I choose to
believe ... the one that I have staked my life upon
... is the story of a girl ... young, uneducated ...
ordinary ... poor ... unqualified.
This girl was chosen by the Creator of the Universe
to be the mother of the Savior of the world. She was
engaged to the young man of her dreams, Joseph, a
carpenter's son who had grown up just a couple of
streets over from hers. An angel sent from God interrupted
Mary's plans for the wedding of her dreams. The angel
told her that she had found favor with God and that
although she was a virgin, she would give birth to
the Son of God.
Her young heart must have cried out, "You call
this favor? Unmarried and pregnant?!"
Let me remind you of one of the stirring truths of
the Christmas story - what you think is horrible just
may turn out to be wonderful! What interrupts your
plans just may be His divine handiwork.
Christmas ushers in the grand possibility of His presence
into all of our earthly circumstances. He comes into
the stink and smell of our existence and nothing is
ever the same again! He interrupts our carefully laid
plans with His presence and we sing with the angels
and dance with the shepherds! He changes your agenda
and challenges you to believe that with Him, nothing
is impossible!
From all of us at Just Joy! Ministries ... May your
Christmas be filled with the joy of His presence!
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