Christmas Day

Nate woke us up about 7:30 this morning.  He was surprisingly calm and said he was hungry.  He usually doesn't eat a lot of breakfast so I was surprised food was on his mind on Christmas morning.  We are doing things a little different this Christmas and we prepared Nate the night before that we would not be opening presents first.  First, we would do our last Jesse Tree devotional and give gifts to Jesus.  It is his birthday after all. 



How do you give gifts to Jesus?  The other day I was reading a blog post by Ann Voskamp called 10 Ways to Celebrate Christmas Morning. Number three on the list is "Gifts for the Birthday Child."  They choose things from the Compassion International Catalog (Samaratin's Purse has one also).  Why do they do this on Christmas morning?  Because in Matthew chapter 25, Jesus says when you give gifts to the least of these, you give gifts to me (Jesus).  That resonated so much with me!  Doing things for the "least of these" is something Christians should be doing on a regular basis, not just at Christmas, but it was really exciting to know that we can give gifts to Jesus on the day we celebrate His birth.  By giving gifts to those in need, we are not only blessing them but we are giving gifts to Jesus!  I have heard this verse many times, but this was the first time I had heard it associated with Christmas.  So, after our Jesse tree devotional, the three of us gathered around the computer and picked out gifts for Jesus.  We actually let Nate choose three gifts and he chose, chickens, a soccer ball and garden seeds.  We also prayed for the children/families that would receive these gifts and prayed that they would have the best gift of all - a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Now it was time for gifts.  We decided ahead of time (and prepared Nate) that he would just be getting gifts out of his stocking and opening one gift before church. I will admit I was a little nervous that he would do a lot of whining and complaining about waiting - waiting to open gifts and waiting to open the rest of his gifts after church.  Surprisingly, he didn't mind at all and had a great attitude.

Carefully using the scissors on his Swiss Army knife.

The quit taking my picture smile.



After a wonderful time of family worship, we finished our gift giving.  I will admit that a few days ago I wasn't excited about going to church on Christmas day. I wanted us to be lazy and stay in our PJs all day.  I thought why can't we just have family worship at home?  Well,  about Thursday I began to get so excited about celebrating the birth of our Saviour with our church family.  I could not wait to sing and worship God for His greatest gift to us.  Thank you, God, for changing my selfish and lazy heart!

This was Nate's favorite gift.

We had a restful and leisure afternoon.  Later that evening we celebrated Christmas with Darren's family.  We had a wonderful meal together and exchanged gifts.  It didn't take Nate long to crash after this long and eventful day.  He's not asleep in this picture, but very tired. 

Darren, Nate and I received many great gifts today.  But, none of them even come close to comparing to the gift God gave us when he gave us Jesus.  I hope you know Him and experience the peace and hope that only He can give!  Merry Christmas!