The thing about Christmas is that it tells us that we are never alone. But even more, it tells us that we are always enough.

The ‘night before Christmas’ was in reality the last night before a forever morning.

What’s special about a story if I could have thought it up? What’s special about a story if I was actually courageous enough to play a part in it? What’s special about the Christmas story is that I am incapable of doing either but God did both.

The message of Christmas is a message of hope when all other such messages created by men can do nothing more than be hopeful.

The hands of man can manufacture many things both penetratingly brilliant and utterly astounding. Yet, despite their amazing dexterity and profound skill they cannot manufacture hope. Such a masterpiece as that is left for the hands of God and a manger crafted by those hands.

The sure path to tomorrow was plotted in a manger and paved on a cross. And although this sturdy byway is mine for the taking, I have incessantly chosen lesser paths. And maybe it is time to realize that Christmas is a promise that I can walk through the world and never get lost in the woods.

I huddle in the dark with a mass of burnt matches strewn at my feet. And yet, for all of those matches I’ve not been able to light a single candle. And huddled in such deep darkness, I’ve somehow yet to realize that Christmas made both matches and candles forever obsolete.

When Christmas has passed, if I find that I am none the better for having engaged it, the only explanation that I can muster up is that I can be handed the greatest of gifts, yet still have the emptiest of hands. And finding myself in that dreadful condition, I am left to assume that the fool within me has chosen to live with the hands that now define me instead of embracing the God Who wishes to fill me.

Yet it seemed that God would derive infinitely more pleasure and draw intimately closer to the likes of us by putting majesty squarely in a manger. God made the poverty of our existence the place of His home.