Positive Daily Inspiration – December 24, 2022 – Christmas Eve

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus*, because he will save his people from their sins.”
Matthew 1:21

Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the LORD saves.

CHRISTMAS EVE!

Personal note: I send you my personal blessings and prayers for the grandest Christmas that you’ve ever had, I pray that every experience is filled with delight, and magic.
Chris Chenoweth

You may have heard this wonderful Christmas story; we share it EVERY Christmas Eve as a holiday tradition. Read it aloud to your family tonight.

This story embodies the meaning of Christmas.

Originally, this story was prepared for UPI News by Louis Cassels. The Christmas story of God born in a man escapes many moderns, because they try to find complex answers to their complex questions. This is utterly simple; so, to the skeptics, we offer a modern parable:

“There was once a kind, decent, mostly good man. The man I am talking about was not a Scrooge. He was generous to his family and upright in his dealings with other people. He just did not believe in all that “incarnation” stuff that churches proclaim at Christmastime.

He couldn’t pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as a man -that a man could have God in him.

One year he said to his wife, “I’m truly sorry to distress you, but I’m not going to go to church with you on Christmas Eve.” So he stayed home while his family went to the evening service. As they drove away in the car, the snow began to fall. The flurries got heavier and heavier. He went to the window to watch them as they drove away, and to watch the snow as it collected on the ground. He finally went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.

Minutes later, he was startled by a loud thudding sound, then another, and then another. He thought to himself, “Someone must be throwing snowballs against my living room window.” When he investigated, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm, and in a desperate search for shelter, they had tried to fly through his large picture window.

He couldn’t just let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he went outside, and found them flopping around in the snow. He remembered a certain area that would be of help to them, an area that would help them live through this Christmas Eve night. The area was the barn where his children kept their pony.

It would provide a warm shelter, if he could only direct the birds to it.

Quickly, he put on his coat and galoshes, and trampled through the evening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide, and turned on the lights inside. But the birds wouldn’t fly into the barn. The man thought, “Food might entice them,” so he hurried back into the house to get something for the birds to eat, making a trail through the door inside the barn. But the birds didn’t pay any attention to the bread crumbs, anymore than they paid attention to the well-lit, warm, wide opening of the barn. To his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flop helplessly in the snow. He tried to catch them; he tried to shoo them into the barn by walking around them, waving his arms, but instead they scattered in every direction – except into the warm, lighted barn. It was then he realized, “They’re afraid of me.”

As he thought, he reasoned, “To them I must be a strange and terrifying creature. If only there was some way I could let them know they could trust me, that I’m not trying to harm them, only to help them. But how can I convince these birds? Everything I do frightens and confuses them.”

They wouldn’t follow; they wouldn’t be led; they wouldn’t be shooed or chased into the barn because they feared him.

As he stood there in the cold snow falling all around him, the thought came to him, “If only I could be a bird, then I could go with them and speak their language. I could tell them, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ I could show them the way to the warm, safe barn. But I’d have to be a bird. I’d have to be one of them so they would understand.”

At that moment, church bells began to ring in the distance. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind, and he stood there are listening to the bells actually feeling the glad tidings of Christmas for the first time. He sank to his knees in the snow as the birds flew into the barn.”

Jesus was born into a world that trembled with fear of a distant God – a society of people who would not even speak God’s name out of fear of death. Jesus Christ was born to bring this message: There is a light and warmth waiting for you in God. The way is open wide for you to enter therein to a FULL abundant life.

This is all because, 2000 years ago, a soul, prepared for eons of time, became incarnate in the body of a babe.

Tonight, around the world, congregations will light the fifth Advent candle placed in the middle of the Advent wreath, representing the birth of the Christ. All candles are lit tonight, representing hope, peace, love, joy, and now the birth of Jesus. It is a time to celebrate and to remember THE REASON for the season.

POSITIVE DAILY PRAYER:

Dear God, we pray that You will bless in love and harmony the time spent with family and friends on this sacred celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Thank You God.

POSITIVE DAILY AFFIRMATION: I meditate tonight on the true reason for the season, and I discover with childlike wonder glad tidings of great joy.

POSITIVE DAILY QUOTE: “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!”
Hamilton Wright Mabie

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GOD BLESS YOU, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Christopher Ian Chenoweth