As Christmas season draws near every year, I promise myself to become more simplistic and child-like in my approach and attempt to enjoy the holidays. I don’t always succeed, but in trying to recapture that youthful, magical time, the memories of my advent innocence—when belief and faith went hand-in-hand—return and help give me a new perspective…
Looking out my bedroom window one Christmas night, I KNOW I saw Santa’s sleigh in the sky! What else could that red blinking light be other than Rudolph’s nose?! I couldn’t pry myself away from the cold window pane as I watched until the light blinked out of sight.
I eventually fell asleep, but it took a long while. I actually saw Rudolph leading Santa’s sleigh! Happy I now had proof and anticipating Santa coming in the morning made my mind and heart race! I could hardly wait to see my presents!
Christmas came that year unlike any other. My ‘secret’ sighting not only changed my Christmas experience, but it changed me. I knew without a doubt that Santa did exist and nothing or no one would ever take that away.
Of course as I grew older, I remembered that experience and realized that the red blinking light was from an airplane either taking off or landing at the municipal airport near our house. But even though the truth of ‘my secret sighting’ was revealed in time, my memory and experience did not change through time.
The truth of the story did not change my story.
In this season of Christmas, I’m humbly reminded that God alone is the author of time, the keeper of time, knows the truth and knows when it is the right time to reveal that truth. He knows exactly what we need, when we need it and will supply both in His time.
As I live my story, I see only what my mind perceives. And more often than I’d like to admit, I see what I want to see. What is my truth today, I’m sure God will reveal as His truth tomorrow.
But tomorrow never seems to come soon enough, does it? We’d like answers and solutions, peace and equality, a better life, a better paying job, healed relationships, healed lives to happen TODAY. But God doesn’t work like that.
A nation once cried out for a king, for a savior to rescue them! Persecuted, in slavery, wandering in the wilderness and wandering away from God, they demanded to be saved from their troubles. Though God didn’t answer them when they demanded, as they demanded, with the king they thought they needed, He DID answer them.
He answered them at just the right time in history, with the right answer and continues to answer the cries of His people today in the same right and perfect manner.
Jesus.
So while Christmas remains for me a package wrapped up with so many mixed emotions, memories, hopes and dreams—from the past and for the future—as I celebrate another Christmas again, I’m so humbly reminded to accept God’s gifts as only He can give them, in His time, one day at a time…
Our present.
Merry Christmas.
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