Christmas is just around the corner!
As I think back over the years, I have many incredible memories of Christmases past. Memories of dinners around the table with family. The hours spent on the chair lift learning how to ski and then ignoring all such lessons to race my brother to the bottom of hill. The mapped-out tours of Christmas lights around town, scheduled down to the second in hopes of seeing every house before the lights turned off for the night (which we never actually accomplished). The fancy Christmas parties with promises of McDonalds afterwards if we pretended to eat food we had never heard of. The pizza dinners and ping-pong tournaments with my cousins. The Christmas Eve nights spent in my brother’s room watching scary movies that he knew would keep me up all night.
Most of those traditions have changed over the years, especially after Will and I got married.
So, this Christmas looks different than many Christmases past, but one thing has remained the same through the years. Hearing the words of Luke 2, the birth of Jesus Christ according to Luke.
It’s a passage that no matter how many times I hear it, or read it aloud, will still bring tears to my eyes. Because there’s just something about the story. There’s something about its familiarity. And there’s something about its message.
In just a few days we will gather to hear that familiar story yet again. The same story we hear year after year. Maybe it is so familiar that you could even recite it.
Yet we keep telling it.
And the obvious question is why, why do we tell this story year after year?
We tell it again and again because there is no other story in scripture that so clearly illustrates God’s desire to be in relationship with us. Because in this story God came to earth as a baby, the Word became flesh.
And maybe we need to hear that story again and again, because maybe again this year we need to be reminded that God simply couldn’t stay away.
And so, whether you join us on Christmas Eve or not, take a moment to read or to listen to the story again. Because by telling the story again, not only do we remember what God did, but we pass the story on to the next generation.
Merry Christmas!
Kimmy