It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! 12-19-2010

I'm sure we're all saying that as we look out of our windows on this Thursday afternoon. Snow is in the air and it makes us think of Christmas. I would hope that each of us realize that we'll miss the point of the story of Christmas if it's just about the snow, the gifts, and getting your Christmas to do list completed.

This Sunday, we will take a look at Joseph and the challenges that his choice to follow God's will would mean for him. It wasn't easy to make a choice to stay with Mary. It would've been easy for him to follow the whims of the world, but instead he chose to follow God's will. This Christmas we live in a world with many challenges - homelessness, war, poverty and death – to name a few. A great Christian writer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote these words from a German prison in 1943. He had lost good friends to the war. He was imprisoned and separated from those he loved. Evil was all around him, but he believed his Christmas was going to be "exceptionally good."

"I think we're going to have an exceptionally good Christmas. The very fact that outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential. I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious ... The poorer our quarters, the more clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ's home on earth."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer chose to follow Jesus. His faithfulness is a witness to us. As we read Joseph’s story this Sunday (Matthew 1:18-25), it will remind us that we need to choose to follow Jesus in the good times and in the tough times. It is my hope that each of us, this Christmas season, would begin to and continue to look a lot like Christ.

In Jesus,
Barry