With only a few days remaining until Christmas 2018, please let me wish you and all your family a happy and safe holiday week. For as long as I can remember, Becky and I have taken the weekend between Christmas and New Year’s Day as our “official” winter vacation. That’s not to say that I haven’t preached a few guest shots while visiting family and friends in different locations, but for the most part, we like to lay low and avoid the snow.

Marione had a nice photograph of the nativity at First Christian in last Sunday’s edition. I wonder if non-believers are ever motivated to stop and wonder at what that simple scene represents. Little do they understand the massive adjustments required to move heaven and earth so that the Eternal God could take on human flesh. No wonder angels sang and shepherds celebrated the news. Foreign royalty traveled countless miles to view the phenomenon. None of them, of course, knew what we know. Not a single first century sage, no matter how well informed, could have imagined what God had in store for His “One of A Kind” Son.

In a way, every child holds a mysterious future. While none of them are truly “one of a kind” in the same sense that Jesus was, they are all possessed of a singularity unlike any other. As we view the face a child, we have little way of knowing what God has in store for them. May you, and all the children you love, seek Grace, find mercy, and celebrate salvation in the coming year.