Miller on Monday..Christmas making

Christmas Making

JR Miller

Christmas as a day in the calendar comes in its season, whatever our response may be.

God sends it, like his sunshine and his rain, on the evil and the good, on the just and the unjust.

But Christmas in its divine meaning will become real to us only as it reenacts itself in our own experience.

Christmas is the gladdest of all the Christian festivals.

It brings a great joy to all the earth. It is for all men.

There is scarcely a home so lowly, in such neglect and poverty, but the Christmas spirit touches it with some little brightness, and the Christmas love carries into it a little breath of warmth, a thought of gentleness and kindness.

 There is scarcely a life so desolate, so cut off from campanionship, so without the blessing of human love, but Christmas finds it with some tenderness, some sense of kinship and fellowship, some word of sympathy and cheer, some token of thought, something to brighten the dreariness and soften the hardness.

The day makes nearly every little child in the land happier. It is observed in every home.

Think of the millions of dollars that are spent in preparation, in buying gifts, from the simplest toys among the poor, to the most costly presents among the rich. There is no need to plead for the observance of Christmas. But there would seem to be need for serious thought about the real meaning of the day and the way to make it what we may make it, so as to get the most we can from it.

How did the world come to have a Christmas?

God gave it to us. It was his gift.

The story is told in the Now Testament. There is one great verse which tells how it came:

“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Christmas thus began in the heart of God.

The world did not ask for it — it was God’s own thought. We love because he first loved us. All the love that warms and brightens this old earth was kindled from the one heavenly lamp that was lighted the first Christmas night. The Child that was born that first Christmas was the Son of God.

God so loved the world that he gave his Son.

Think of the beginning — how small it was. It was only a baby, a baby among the poor. Think where the baby was born, — in a stable, with the cattle all about. Think where the baby slept its first sleep, — in a little box, out of which the cattle ate their fodder. All the circumstances were lowly and homely on the earth side.

The first Christmas did not mean much in the world. Its influence did not reach out far. A little company of lowly shepherds, keeping their watch in the fields, were the only persons outside, so far as we are told, who heard of the wonderful event, of came to look at the new-born Child. The first Christmas touched the shepherds with its wonder and with its holy sentiment. But with this exception the great world slept on that night as if nothing was happening.

The world does not know its greatest hours nor mark its most stupendous events.

Within the lowly cattle-shed, where the Baby lay, there was nothing which at that time seemed unusual. There was no divine splendor, such as we would expect to see in the face of one who was the Son of God.

The only light was the shining of love in the peasant mother’s face.

When the shepherds came in , all that they saw was a newborn baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, and a quiet couple, Mary and Joseph, bending over it in tender love. 

Yet that was the beginning.

It was a real Christmas.
Love - Christian love -was born that first Christmas night.
Love of God.. God’s own love.. a spark of God’s life.. came down from heaven to earth when Jesus Christ was born!

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, love divine;

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and angels gave the sign.

Christina Rossetti

Wishing you all a very blessed Advent!

Trish xx