MERRY CHRISTMAS

by Linda Hall

As I write this, my husband and I are in a hotel in Massachusetts. We have another eight hours of driving today before we are at my mother's house where we will spend Christmas with our family. Our son and family are already there. They left a day earlier than we did. My sister and family live near there. So, we'll all be together on Christmas.

Our car is packed with gifts and even last night we spent some time in the mall. This is Christmas in north america and we celebrate it to the hilt, don't we?

It gets easy to lose sight of what we are really celebrating. Why was Jesus born the way he was? Because when you think about it, if we took the Christmas story out of the Bible, we would only lose a few short accounts in Matthew and Luke. He didn't come so we could enjoy nativity scenes and think about a baby. He didn't come so we could all go into debt buying stuff for each other.

No. He came to die. He came to redeem us. He came to usher in his Kingdom. He came to bring us home.

The entire Bible, Old and New Testaments is about Jesus. All of it. One of the things that I'm learning this year is that every verse is about Jesus. Every verse is about redemption. Every verse is about ushering in the Messiah's kingdom. I've heard it said that the entire Bible is a book about our longing for home, our longing for redemption. That's the true message of Christmas.

I wish all of you a very wonderful and meaningful Christmas!