Advent Devotions 2023

I will never forget that one late Christmas Eve night/early Christmas morning. I had just come home from midnight Christmas Eve services at the church I was serving. I was exhausted, but there were still preparations that needed to be accomplished getting ready for Christmas morning with a young child. Once those were finished (about 1:30AM), the only thing left to do before catching a few hours of sleep (knowing I would be awakened early to see what Santa brought) was to walk the dog. We walked down our street so he could do his business and then turned around to head back home. As we approached the house immediately next to ours, our dog saw something move in the drainage tile under the driveway and lunged at it. Before my tired brain could process what was going on, the skunk that had been lying low in there turned and laid a good spray all over my dog. It was cold out, so an outdoor bath seemed out of the question. I took the dog into the house and closed him up in the bathroom so I could figure out how to clean him up. I then went and woke Heather up - which she was really happy about, especially when I told her what had happened. The best remedy is baking soda, dawn detergent, and hydrogen peroxide. Thanks to Facebook and another dad in the neighborhood still being up with his preparations, I was able to get everything I needed and we washed the dog really well. Then we had to clean the bathroom and shampoo the carpets before going to bed. I think we finally got to bed about two hours before Tyler came and awakened us to see what Santa brought. It was a night I will never forget. 

Here’s the thing, church: Christmas doesn’t always play out the way it does on a Hallmark TV special. Sometimes skunks happen at 2 in the morning. I think back to that first Christmas morning and it wasn’t a walk in the park for Mary or Joseph. They were away from home with nowhere to stay, and she went into labor. Just about anything that could have gone wrong for them did. Yet, in the midst of it all, Christmas came. To them, a child was born. A son was given. The one God told them they would parent who would be a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace was born. The one on whose shoulders the government would rest was here. The Light of the World came into the world, and darkness would never overcome it again. 

As Christmas dawns tomorrow, there is a real chance for a lot of us that it just hasn’t worked out the way we wanted it to. We may be down that it isn’t going to be that perfect family Christmas we wanted and worked toward. I hope you understand this night, as our thoughts and hearts turn toward the story of that first Christmas so long ago, that Christmas came to us not to give us warm fuzzy feelings around a fire with family but to heal the deepest, darkest, most broken places in our lives and offer us hope.  That hope comes in so many ways through Jesus, but Matthew wants to remind us of the prophecy that Mary and Joseph will give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel which means God is with us. God wants us to know that no matter what we are going through, we are not alone. I hope you know that tonight. God is with you. 

Merry Christmas, friends!