Are You Ready for Christmas?

Christmas is almost here and the question is usually "Are you ready for Christmas?" In other words, have we got our shopping done, presents wrapped, tree up, food cooked, cards sent, plans made and parties scheduled? All really wonderful things that make this time special.

I love Christmas.I love presents, both getting and giving them. I love lights on houses, especially against the snow. It makes me feel like a kid. I love eating Christmas stuff. I love being around family and having days off. I like getting up early and making coffee on Christmas morning. I like the glimmer of hope Christmas and a new year brings.

Are you ready for Christmas? Looking at Jesus and his birth and what that means to me I would have to say yes....yes I am. His birth means forgiveness. It means reconciliation. It is a gift of life and Spirit and hope and belief and the value of every human birth. Jesus was born for one great purpose: To bring us to God and God to us.

I am so pitiful in my sin and weakness that it takes a child to save me. Before he could die as a man on a wooden cross for my sin he had to be born in a wooden manger. The innocent child looking up at the face of his Mother is the innocent man who would look down from the cross into those same eyes thirty three years later.

If Christmas means forgiveness and salvation I am ready for it. I am ready in March, in July in September....

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which is my sin though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run,
And do them still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin by which I won
Others to sin? and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by thyself that at my death thy sun
Shall shine as it shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, thou hast done.
I have no more.

A Hymn to God the Father- John Donne.