When it comes to Christmas time, I remember my early years and what Christmas meant to me. We were very poor. My mother was a single parent left to raise eight children in the early ’50s.
We were poor but not too poor that every time Christmas came we had plenty of gifts; by that I mean we actually got a whole package of gum and at the church Christmas concert we got a little brown paper bag with Christmas candies and a mandarin orange — how could life get any better than that?
The greatest gift my mother ever gave me though, was to share the true meaning of Christmas. She taught us that Christmas was a time to remember that Jesus came willingly to earth to bring peace and hope to mankind and to offer Himself by dying on the cross, so we could be reconciled to God. In this time of tumult and terror, the child that came so many years ago, still offers us peace and hope. The greatest news ever. After all these years, I elect to thank Jesus for being willing to come as a child to provide a way so that we could have access to father God.
Thank you Jesus that you are being born in us so we can have eternal life.
Helen Van Zutphen
Duncan