I’ve shared this story before, but on the Sunday . . .

I’ve shared this story before, but on the Sunday afternoon following Thanksgiving, when I was in seventh grade, it began to snow.  It started slowly and without much fanfare—not unlike any number of other snows that I had experienced growing up in Detroit.

The sky turned the shade of dirty wool, and the flakes danced through the wind as in one of those glass balls that you invert.  Little by little the sidewalks whitened, and soon the neighborhood was alive with the rasping sound of shovels.  Before long the roads were filled, and you could no longer see the curb.  The few cars that managed to pass by, trudged through the drifts—their spinning tires forming wings of snow as they went.

By evening the storm had intensified.  Ferns of frost began to sprout at the corners of my bedroom window, and the bushes outside bowed and splayed like miniature bridesmaids overwhelmed by an armful of frozen flowers.  Throughout the night it continued, as an army of plows negotiated the streets, scraping holes in my sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, the city lay blanketed beneath nearly two feet of snow.  For a town known as the “Motor City,” all traffic ceased.  A litany of closings was recited on TV, and the front page had a photograph of two people skiing down the middle of Woodward Avenue!

What I remember most was how peaceful the city had suddenly become.  The only sounds were the caroling of bells from a nearby church, the shouts of children enjoying the unexpected extension of their Thanksgiving vacation, and the muffled conversations of neighbors who hadn’t spoken all year.  Other than that, everything just stopped.  For a few hours at least, it seemed as if the entire world had been transformed.

Needless to say, we are not likely to experience a snowstorm like that here in Grapevine, Texas.  But all the same, I do hope that you will sense that, with each and every Christmas, the world is transformed!

No longer can we claim that God is out of reach, because in Jesus Christ, God reached out to us.  No longer can we claim that God doesn’t understand what our lives are like, because in Jesus Christ, God chose to live among us.  The greatest Christmas present that humankind could have ever imagined came gift-wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.  Merry Christmas!