Merry Christmas Jesus

Thank you Lord for sending your only son down here with all of us. Jesus, what a sacrifice that was in and of itself. That you left heaven in all its splendor (I cannot even fathom it) to be born down here, especially when you knew what the outcome would be and the torture and sacrifice you'd go through after a hard life here on earth. I've already been thinking a lot about the circumstances of how/when/where you were born. Then tonight we've watched the movie, The Nativity Story. I have sat here and cried as I watched the scriptures put into movie form to show the events of your birth.

• You were born to a mother who was probably looked down on and shunned for her questionable pregnancy. In today's standards, we would have looked down on you too as the child of an unwed, teenage mother. Who would believe one who said that it was "God's work" or one who claimed to be a virgin mother?
• You were born to a working class, poor family. Joseph and Mary had nothing- no home, no fortune, no great future... You could have come to a wealthy family or one of great influence.
• You were born in a barn with a trough and hay for your bed. Not in a warm home or a hospital with family standing by eagerly awaiting. You are royalty, and yet you were born like a lowly one- less even- not even to be born in a home, but in the midst of animals.
• Your mother had to go through her delivery in a place of strangers without anyone familiar to be with her in that scary process of delivering her first born. How terrified she must have been with no mother, sisters, female relatives there to be with her and explain and help.
• Your family had to travel away from home at the time of your birth, away from any support system for you. No familiar people, neighbors, places- only strangers and no place for your mother to go when it was her time.
• The "witnesses" to your birth were animals and a group of what was considered "low class" shepherds from the fields. You really did come for every-man didn't you? You are God, and yet, you aren't too good for us "lowly" ones.
• You moved the stars, rulers, circumstances, and more to fulfill the prophecies, to show men your son, to make a way for his miraculous birth. There is nothing you cannot do.

God, you really sacrificed when you came down here, on so many levels. Thank you for what you did so many hundreds of years ago, what you've done in my life, and what you'll continue to do in the future. Thank you for loving your sinful, wicked creation so much that you would give up your comfort, glory, honor, worship by angels and come to live in a corrupt and evil place, in human form to suffer hunger, cold, pain, sorrow, loneliness, homelessness, stress, worry, and more than I could ever know, just to save us pitiful people. We are so undeserving, but those of us who have come to know you are so very thankful.

Merry Christmas Jesus!

clipart from cutecolors.com