The Christmas gift

God's inexhaustible love antidotes pressures and inharmony during the holidays.

One Christmastime I learned a lot about the value of having spiritual priorities in my life, and the healing that comes as we listen for Christ's message of God's love for us.

In the run up to Christmas, my thoughts were heavy and darkened with the busyness of preparing for the season. I was feeling pressured about how much extra I had to fit into an already busy schedule. Added to this, we had a family discussion about how we would spend Christmas Day, and it had not gone well.

My husband and I had explained to our two teenage daughters and young son that before our usual family gathering we would all be going to church and Sunday School together, since this year Christmas fell on a Sunday. The girls were happy at this idea and welcomed the thought of going to Sunday School on Christmas morning. Our son, however, had a very different attitude. He was hoping for a new bike for Christmas, and there was just no way that he was going to be in Sunday School on Christmas morning. He wanted to be out riding his new bike! There didn't seem to be a way to reach an agreement with him, and as a result the situation was left unresolved. For several days afterward he would barely communicate with me, and when he did he stated emphatically, "I'm not going, you know, I'm just not going."

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POSITIVE PRESS
December 20, 1993
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