Home for Christmas?

Dear Fellow Children of God,

Last week my two youngest children came home for Christmas.  My daughter, Mary, came home from teaching in Chevak, AK.  My son, Tim, returned home from his first semester of college at the University of Montana.  It can be a real joy for families to spend Christmas together.  In fact, we have so romanticized the original Christmas story of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus that we can come to believe that for a Christmas to be all that it should be a family must be together.

However, you and I know that families do not always get to spend Christmas together.  Some have no other family members with which to spend Christmas.  It is a fact of life today that many live in different states and simply cannot be in the same town at Christmas.  For some, a loved one may have passed away and there will never be Christmas together again.  In some families there are divisions so that even though the family could spend Christmas together they miss that opportunity.  Just because we like to think of Christmas as a time that everyone spends with family that is not always the case. In fact for those of us in Alaska the majority of people are probably separated from some family member at Christmas time.  So, if we think that Christmas is a family time, but we can’t spend it together, how do we celebrate Christmas?

But, did you ever think that the first Christmas was really an occasion where family was apart?  In order for our Heavenly Father to begin the work of saving a rebellious world from their own selfishness, hatred, rebellion, and sin, the Father sent His only Son away from home.  Jesus did not get to spend that first Christmas in heaven with His Father.  He spent it on a cold, painful, death-filled world beginning His saving work. 

So the Christmas message to us is that, even though we live in a world where things are not always perfect, even though we live in a world where we don’t always get to spend time with loved ones, even though we live in a world of sin and division, God has broken into our imperfect lives in love.  God loved us enough that first Christmas to send His Son away from home so that He might begin the work of overcoming our pain and sin with his love.

This Christmas may God’s Christmas love break into any of your trials and troubles and sin so that you may know the joy and peace of God’s gift of His Son.

A Child of God, thankful for the Love of God that came down at Christmas,

Pastor Jonathan

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ABOUT ‘THOUGHTS FROM THE PASTOR’ -   I am sending these e-mail messages, hopefully weekly, to all St. John members and friends whose e-mails I have.  (I am always adding new names of friends and members – in case you are just receiving this e-mail for the first time.)  However, if you don’t want to receive this e-mail, please let me know, and I’ll gladly leave your name off my list for this message. . . Or, if you know someone who would like to receive one of these e-mails, please send me their e-mail address.

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