God's picture of CHristmas (from our Candle light service, CHristmas Eve Eve 2015)

The problem with life is the picture of it we have in our heads. Here is the thing, we all have a picture of what Christmas should be. It’s tricky, because you get married and now you have to plan Christmas around the traditions of others. What is your picture of Christmas? What are your favorite traditions of things you do with your loved ones on Christmas? I want to share with you a few of our Christmas cards through the years. Now, I don’t want to hurt any one’s feelings but if nothing else I am good at putting myself in other people’s shoes. Tara loves to open up Christmas cards and read them and see the personalized ones with a family portrait on the front. Well, I am not that into cards. I just don’t have a use for them and the reason is I am a realist. I know how I pick out cards at the store. I walk around and look for a large sign that tells you what section of cards you are in. I scan and look for the most appropriate(or most inappropriate one) I can find for the occasion. Whether it is birthday, get well soon, Merry Christmas or anniversary the process is the same. Then I grab my selection and if it is good I grab the envelope and I am out the door. Now, I know some of you get cards and you read them and think awe that is so sweet, that is such a great thing. I can’t believe they spent all that time picking out the perfect card for me. Well, if the he is Jeff he didn’t. It’s fate or it’s God’s plan it was not Jeff’s research. I also see the Christmas cards with the family portraits on them. I hate taking family portraits, I have done a good job of raising daughters who aren’t big fans of it either. But every year without fail, we dress up in some way and we go somewhere and we take pictures knowing that we will be immortalized on someone’s mantle mostly because we are so darn good looking but also because that is what people do. But, I know the pain of getting everyone dressed, getting everyone to look at the camera. Getting everyone to smile, have their hair in place and eyes opened all at the same time. I know there are lots and lots of takes and very, very few final products that make the cut. I have a few in particular that I absolutely love. One because I came up with the idea and the others because well it tells you who we are. Picture one, now we are not a clapping, speaking out, celebrating kind of church family I know this full well, But if you feel the urge to ooh and ahhh go right ahead I will pause for it each time we click thru these because we are pretty darn good looking if I do say so myself. Here is picture one it is one that I thought perfectly encapsulates the American family today, and yes this was a few years ago. We are all seated and on a phone or ipad while the picture is being taken. Here is another one where we are all taking selfies which if you think about it was before it’s time but we all know how cutting edge I can be. It’s realistic, I mean we could have made it more realistic and I plan on doing our Christmas card photo another way next year. It will be a picture of me separating Alexa and PJ as if they were in a fight while Tara is chasing Brae in the background. Now that would be real, but go into a restaurant and look at families, they are all on an electronic of some sort ignoring one another so we put this in a warm fuzzy feel good Christmas family photo. Here is the next picture, I love this one. For more reasons than one. First of all I love that it shows just how different we are. Alexa in her Miami Heat Dewayne Wade jersey, me in my Washington Redskins jersey, PJ in her Florida Gator jersey and hat and Tara in some ratty looking thing she found in a thrift store somewhere. But all of us are smiling, all of us are looking at the camera and well it’s perfect until you zoom in on our angel. PJ is in the background being PJ and we had no idea thru most of the shoot. Finally, this one happened by accident. Alexa, PJ and I were oh so thrilled to get dressed and ride all the way out to Washington Oaks to have our pictures taken in front of trees(not woods trees Alexa) but we have trees and ponds and things in town. About half way thru we were headed down a long tree covered path, and I put Brae down so we could have one of just Alexa, PJ and Brae and she started to fuss. So Alexa and PJ joined in and if that isn’t the most realistic view of what we think I don’t know what is. While family portraits are not my favorite Christmas tradition. I do have several that I absolutely love. I love waking up Christmas morning and watching the girls walk in to their gifts and seeing the look on their faces. I love taking them over next door and letting the do Christmas with my parents. I love taking them to Georgia and letting them do it all over again with Tara’s family. While I do not love putting the Christmas tree up, I do love watching the girls decorate it. I love watching Christmas movies I have my favorites and we all probably do. For me it’s Rudolph and it’s Charlie Brown. Those are my two favorites so we have to watch them each year as a family and if they aren’t your favorites there is a time after the service where I will offer prayer for you and your misguided taste in Christmas movies. But probably one of my favorites which has evolved over time is going around looking at Christmas lights with my family. We have done it in separate vehicles, as a hay ride and even once we played redneck bingo in the church van as we rode around. I love it. Those are my pictures of Christmas and they are probably different from most of yours. I know for a fact that all of them are different from God’s picture of Christmas. John 1:1-2 God never sleeps, God never slumbers but let’s pretend he does for the sake of this sermon. That morning God woke up alone. His son who was always there with him from the very beginning now was not He was being incarnated and making his official entrance into the world. He was born in a mess, and not treated as the King of Kings. It wasn’t just a stark reminder of not having Him present there with Him in Heaven for about the next 33 years. It was the reminder that He was going to be treated poorly all of his life, He was going to eventually be beaten very badly and then crucified on a cross. All this is God’s first Christmas and what he planned out from the beginning of time. God knew how it was going to go, and I know how things are going to go a lot of times but there is wishful thinking. Many times my Sunday mornings are filled with wishful thinking, even though I know people will choose other things. I wonder if God has that, wishful thinking even though He knows without a doubt. Now every year, I will probably try to set aside a night to watch Rudolph, one of the girls will be at a friends house, or have a bunch of homework to do. I may have to take care of something or Tara may take too long at the store. The bottom line is it won’t be the way I pictured it and it will somehow have less meaning than if it had been exactly as planned out. I will try several times to plan out an event where we can all get together and look at lights and eat dinner and enjoy a Christmas tradition but odds are half of us will have other plans. That is life, and we cannot let things devalue our experience even though they seem to. God had a picture of Christmas the first Christmas, and He had a picture of every Christmas after that and the scary part is He has the power to make Christmas what He wants it to be. But, just like if I force the girls to stay home and watch the movie with us, it loses it’s feeling if it is forced. God gives us the ability to choose His Son as our Savior and He gives us the ability to choose what our Christmas is about. Let’s try harder this year in the coming days to make Christmas more like what God pictured than what we have made it about. There was once a man who didn't believe in God, and he didn't hesitate to let others know how he felt about religion and religious holidays. His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his disparaging comments. One snowy eve, his wife was taking their children to a service in the farm community in which they lived. They were to talk about Jesus' birth. She asked him to come, but he refused. "That story is nonsense!" he said. "Why would God lower Himself to come to Earth as a man? That's ridiculous!" So she and the children left, and he stayed home. A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As the man looked out the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax before the fire for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump. Something had hit the window. He looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet. When the snow let up a little, he ventured outside to see what could have been beating on his window. In the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese. Apparently they had been flying south for the winter when they got caught in the snowstorm and couldn't go on. They were lost and stranded on his farm, with no food or shelter. They just flapped their wings and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. A couple of them had flown into his window, it seemed. The man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. The barn would be a great place for them to stay, he thought. It's warm and safe; surely they could spend the night and wait out the storm. So he walked over to the barn and opened the doors wide, then watched and waited, hoping they would notice the open barn and go inside. But the geese just fluttered around aimlessly and didn't seem to notice the barn or realize what it could mean for them. The man tried to get their attention, but that just seemed to scare them, and they moved further away. He went into the house and came with some bread, broke it up, and made a bread crumb trail leading to the barn. They still didn't catch on. Now he was getting frustrated. He got behind them and tried to shoo them toward the barn, but they only got more scared and scattered in every direction except toward the barn. Nothing he did could get them to go into the barn where they would be warm and safe. "Why don't they follow me?!" he exclaimed. "Can't they see this is the only place where they can survive the storm?" He thought for a moment and realized that they just wouldn't follow a human. "If only I were a goose, then I could save them," he said out loud. Then he had an idea. He went into barn, got one of his own geese, and carried it in his arms as he circled around behind the flock of wild geese. He then released it. His goose flew through the flock and straight into the barn--and one-by-one, the other geese followed it to safety. He stood silently for a moment as the words he had spoken a few minutes earlier replayed in his mind: "If only I were a goose, then I could save them!" Then he thought about what he had said to his wife earlier. "Why would God want to be like us? That's ridiculous!" Suddenly it all made sense. That is what God had done. We were like the geese--blind, lost, perishing. God had His Son become like us so He could show us the way and save us. As the winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and pondered this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood why Christ had come. Years of doubt and disbelief vanished with the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and prayed his first prayer: "Thank You, God, for coming in human form to get me out of the storm.