This is Christmas

copied from Decision Magazine, "Ruth's Attic" a selection from Ruth Bell Graham's writing:

Merry Christmas (in Finnish)

This is Christmas

It is just before Christmas, but perhaps you don't care anymore.  Something has happened, and now you find no joy or meaning to your life.  Perhaps the most you look for is some temporary form of escape.

Maybe you can't give anything.  There's nothing left to give - or there's no one left to give to.

Listen.

What's Christmas all about anyway?  Wasn't there a death, an emptiness, a need?  Wasn't there a  Love somewhere - infinite, eternal, unchangeable - a Love that gave His only Son?  That's what Christmas is all about:  God coming to Earth in the Person of the Christ Child to do for you and for me what we cannot possibly do for ourselves.

Jesus lived among us and had the same kinds of problems that we do.  You haven't a problem - and I  haven't a problem - that He doesn't understand from close personal experience.  He spent His entire life meeting human needs.  He died on the cross to deal once and for all with our greatest need - redemption from sin.  This Christmas, God is asking you to come to Him.  Bring your failures, your sins, your problems, your fears.   Bring yourself.

This is Christmas.  Redemption's glorious exchange of gifts!