The Miracle Of Christmas

Christmas 2004, Maharastra India.

I’d never been anywhere until I went to India. It was the most gratifying time of my life. I was convinced to visit the boys orphanage for Christmas. To leave behind the materialism of an American Christmas and to share in the joys of the simplest of things.

Like a chalk dust art gift drawn by the boys!

And the Christmas Story with Santa!!!!

I sold enough hats to buy the boys a PA system. To the penny! God is good!!!

Each child sat patiently as their names were called on Christmas Eve and they waited until each of their 81 brothers had their gifts before opening them. They received candy, a hanky, a new set of hand made tailored clothing for school, and fire crackers!!!! Oh yes! Those boys had me jumping for days!!!

Then on Christmas morning we celebrated the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ!! With dancing and the biggest celebration I’ve ever witnessed. It was so much fun. And the boys wore their new dress clothes.

I dressed in my Christmas Sari, and looked like an Amazon Woman next to the tiny Indian women!!!

The miracle of Christmas is love.

God loved us so much he gave his only Son to bridge that gap between God and man…made by man wanting his own way in the beginning. He wants relationship with us and the only way that’s possible is through Jesus. Jesus was and still is today, the perfect gift.

Every Christmas our family gives gifts of love to needy Indian families through Gospel For Asia. It’s probably the most fun we have all year!!! A few of the things we buy are goats, chickens, cows, sewing machines, weaving looms, and water filters. We never forget to give the most treasured of all gifts The Bible.

This is love with feet and hands.

I Corinthians 13

¹ If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.