Christmas Day Service

This year’s Christmas fell on a Sunday. It was the first time in many years, so we had to decide whether to have three, two or one service on Sunday morning. Many churches settled for one or more Christmas Eve services and cancelled Sunday a.m. altogether. I really feel that Sunday morning church should be a given in every family, so we planned a Christmas Eve service at each campus, plus a Christmas morning service at each campus.

I wasn’t surprised by the packed out Christmas Eve services but I was very surprised by the almost full house at both campuses on Sunday morning. We enjoyed four awesome, memorable, less than an hour long celebrations. People seem to love traditional services with carols, Christmas story and some great musicians. A highlight for me at our 6:00 p.m. service took place during my presentation of the Christmas symbols. I was happily teaching on the meaning behind Christmas trees, holly, candy canes and the like. My grandchildren, Madeline and Max, were helping me by passing me the symbol I was talking about.

Everything was going according to plan. There was a fireplace, comfy chair, candles, Christmas tree and a baby Jesus in the manger as a setting. Suddenly, little Jordan (2) quietly left his daddy’s side and came up on the platform to join his sister. He had his bottle in hand. Without hesitation Jordan went over to baby Jesus in the straw covered manger and started feeding him with his bottle. It was a Kodak moment—his generosity in sharing his bottle with Jesus was better than anything I could have done.

One of the most memorable Christmas gifts I received, since I wrote about the other ones last week, was this set of lady bugs a friend from our church had made. A friend of Irene’s and Ernie’s had painted two larger rocks to represent papa and nana (our names were written on the belly side) and six little rocks that each represent our six grandchildren. The family of lady bugs sits in my office—our grandkids loved seeing the cute little lady bugs that bore their own names. Thanks a million to Gill McCullloch for creating them and to Irene and Ernie for giving them to me.



Thanks for visiting.

Barry