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| One day I found the figurines had moved from the stable to worship the "real baby" Jesus (as Liam calls this bigger version of Jesus). I guess the smaller baby Jesus just didn't cut it because he is missing from his tiny manger and I still can't find him! |
As the Christmas season draws to a close, I am left with a very full and thankful heart. I haven't been writing too many blog posts because I have felt an abundance of grace in the past month that I have been savoring. God has given me an understanding this Christmas that I have never had before and I am still pondering all these things in my heart.
Up until this year, I have to admit that I have had a shallow understanding of what Christmas really is and what a gift the Incarnation truly is. For the past several years, I have been trying to overcome this shallowness, but came up short. I was always grateful on a certain level that Jesus was born, but I wasn't able to internalize the magnitude of this gift until this year. It was something I knew in my head, but for some reason, couldn't get to my heart. Christmas to me was always a very happy time of year, but not the most spiritual time of year. Lent and Easter were always the spiritual high for me and I just didn't see how the Christmas gift compared to the gift God gave us when he died on the cross.
But this year was completely different. Maybe it was the St. Andrew Chaplet I prayed with my family, or maybe it was the Vision of St. Bridget, but this Christmas, I was given the grace to see beyond the figurines of my little manger scene to feel and see in my heart what really happened on that night. Light filling the dark stable as Jesus was born, Jesus lying on the cold ground, shaking and crying, Mary and Joseph worshiping their own baby; all these things I had never really thought about before. For the first time, I started to see how precious a gift it is that God would come down from the beauty and splendor of heaven to our dark and cold world. And Why? I'm really not that great. He didn't have to become a man and subject himself to all the cruelties of this life for me. But he did. And I am more thankful this year than I ever have been.
I can say with certainty that this year, was the best Christmas I have ever had and I hope you can say the same.
1 comment:
Along the same lines Sarah:
In the kids' Christmas program, the angels were asking themselves how Jesus would be coming to Earth. A King? A ruler? A mighty man? They were amazed that God would send his son down to Earth as a humble baby. A helpless, tiny baby as the savior.
Julie M
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