Hear to Heart at Christmastime

Do you ever make your holiday plans, shop, wrap, bake, and make stockings Christmas stockings—and then hope everything will go the way you envision?  Someone once told me that life is what happens when you’re making other plans.  I’ve found that when our plans go astray it opens a window for God to reveal to us what Christmas love and joy is about—even in unlikely places we wouldn’t have chosen.

In 1975 our four-year-old son was in a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recovering from an asthma attack. We had planned to spend a happy family Christmas at home and my parents-in-law were coming, but as it turned out our son was one of the few patients in the children’s ward who they didn’t release.   Despite our carefully laid plans, it had become evident that Justin, along with a few other sick kids and their parents, would not be going home for the holidays.

There he was, stuck in a drab hospital hooked up to an IV instead of sitting on Santa’s knee sharing his Christmas wish or playing with his little brother at home. And my own last-minute plans for package-wrapping, cookie-baking, and stocking-stuffing had gone out the window. Being newcomers in town, we’d had not one visitor in the hospital, and despite the good intentions of the caring medical staff, a hospital was still a very lonely place to be at Christmas time.

I missed our baby, eighteen-month-old Christopher, who was at home with his dad in our family room which, when we left, had been all aglow with twinkling Christmas tree lights, gaily colored felt stockings all hung in a row, bright plaid bows, and shining candles. But Justin and I gazed for hours at the monotonous brown walls and faded cowboy curtains that blended so well with the gray hospital floors.

My husband's parents called and said they decided to postpone Christmas and their trip to see us until Justin came home from the hospital. They told me that until then we should act as if Christmas hadn't arrived.

While we had expected to put Christmas off, God had other plans! Much to our surprise, He was to use this experience to teach us the true meaning of Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, God’s love came first in the form of a man brightly dressed as Santa Claus. Bounding down the hall, he delivered a thoughtful, personal gift to each little patient. Justin was given a cowboy hat that, surprisingly, was just his size.

“Who is this from?” I asked the nurse in attendance. “Did some organization send this gift?”

I thought a local civic club had done this as its yearly project.

“On, no,” she replied. “Three years ago a mom and dad’s only daughter, a little three-year-old, died in this ward on Christmas Eve. Now each year the parents bring special gifts to the children who have to stay in the hospital at Christmas. Although they prefer to remain anonymous, they still manage to obtain the exact size or need of each child.”

While that was sinking in, two little Campfire girls bounced in the room and handed our son a handmade white mitten ornament they’d decorated with holly.

“Merry Christmas!” they chimed to us as they continued down the hall.

Hardly had the cheerful words faded away when a family of Hispanic carolers arrived. Gaily dressed in red and green native costumes, guitars in hand, they sang “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night.”

A little later when I was about to tuck our son in for the night, a big University of Oklahoma football player in his red and white varsity jersey walked in and began to chat with him. An avid football fan, Justin couldn’t believe that a “real live” gridiron hero had come especially to see him. He was all the more amazed and delighted when the burley athlete produced a surprise gift for him. Opening it, Justin beamed.

“A cowboy rifle and spurs!” he exclaimed excitedly. “They go with the hat!”

The coincidence took my breath away, especially since these gift were what I would have bought if I could have gone shopping.

The next day, on Christmas morning, a tall, thin, shabbily dressed man quietly entered the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Like some character from a Dickens novel, his clothes were tattered and torn. Without a word, he took out an old flute and began to play a lovely Christmas medley. One carol blended into another as the simplicity of each song took on a beauty beyond any I had ever known. Finishing his serenade like the little drummer boy, he handed Justin a small cup full of tiny red candles. Then with a smile he slipped out the door. He had said very little and never identified himself.

Slowly, but clearly, I began to realize that none of the people who had shared their love and gifts with us knew us—or even told us their names. Unlike most Christmas gift-giving, we’d done nothing to earn or deserve their gifts. While my own hurts and needs had created a cold barrier around my emotions, these simple acts of kindness had caused the walls of neglected feelings to come tumbling down and opened my heart anew to the Savior.

That lonely hospital, with its drab walls lined with construction paper bells, had become a place of God’s healing and reconciling love. Away from family, friends, and our baby son, without our family tree and familiar traditions, God had delivered to us His special Christmas gift. The loneliest and darkest of places was filled with the presence of angels and the brightest of lights.

 

Quotes to Ponder

The spirit of Christmas brings memories drifting down like snowflakes.

            --Dorothy Colgan 

O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect light.

            --“We Three Kings of Orient Are”

 

Each Christmas we share
With friends both far and near
Makes our years together
So memorable and dear.
       
           --Anonymous
 

Christmas is Coming - A Special Parent's Toolbox

Christmas…the season of gifts great and small when joy is the nicest gift of them all.

Long ago one Christmas in an African village, school was letting out for the holiday. A shy little boy came up to the desk and presented his missionary-teacher with a beautiful seashell as a Christmas present. The boy had walked many, many miles to a special inlet of the ocean, the only place such a shell could be found. “How wonderful that you have traveled so far for this lovely present,” said the teacher, greatly touched by his gift.

At once the boy’s eyes brightened as he said, “Long walk part of gift.”

As you get ready for the holiday, remember that the preparations you make for family and friends—the baking, the wrapping, and looking for the just-right present—is all part of your gift to them.

 

Book & Movie Reviews

Godsight: Renewing the Eyes of
Our Hearts

After Lael Arrington was diagnosed at age twenty-nine with rheumatoid arthritis, she found herself walking with God in duty and resignation and living small within the limitations of her illness.  Growing up in a Bible church, she always had a passion for God’s Word as precept and proposition, but, as she came to realize, not the same passion for God as a person.  It was a deadly combination. And she regularly escaped through daydreams and fantasies of the life she longed to live.

In an oft-quoted passage from “The Weight of Glory,” C. S. Lewis wrote: "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

Whether we are focused on consuming and enjoying a “nice” Christian life, struggling with addictions, or walking with God in duty and resignation as Lael once was, her book Godsight: Renewing the Eyes of Our Hearts shows how God can refocus our mud-pie imagination to see the glory of his “holiday at the sea.” It probes how God redeems our imagination for him as we touch the emptiness of our dreams, learn obedience, and live life as war in his Kingdom Story, as he exposes the pride that hides gives us a fresh vision of his cross and his throne that he wants to share with us for eternity.

Our wonder for God is so small.  I invite you to join Lael as a fellow traveler on this journey to opening our lives and imaginations to transformation.  She is one of the brightest writers and thinkers in our time, vulnerable and insightful, and reading her book   will be well worth your time.

You can purchase this book for $14.99 (shipping included) by using our Special Order Form.

Since Jesus Christ IS the reason for the season of Christmas—

    Here’s what two readers wrote about this book: Award-winning author Cheri Fuller presents A Fresh Vision of Jesus: Timeless Ways to Experience Christ, a simple reminder of the importance of forging a closer relationship with God through Jesus, despite the hectic bustle of daily life that pulls one's thoughts away from the sacred. Revealing the many ways in which God demonstrates his presence, A Fresh Vision of Jesus stresses that one should search for a personal vision or encounter with Jesus, in order to transform one's life. A deeply inspirational and spiritual book, written especially as an antidote to the increasingly rushed and worldly demands of the changing times.

Cheri’s book, A Fresh Vision of Jesus: Timeless Ways to Experience Christ, shows how God grows our vision for him by telling stories of how we see and experience Jesus through the Word, through service, through trials, through mountaintop experiences and through his whispers to our hearts. In each section of the book she shares a story from her own life as well as a story from the life of a modern believer, a historical figure like Hannah Whitall Smith, and a biblical character like Mary Magdalene. Cheri's confident vision of Jesus enlarges my own and lifts my prayers in expectancy to see what he will do.

You can purchase this book for $12.99 (shipping included) by using our Special Order Form.