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Hello!  Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  Embrace has enjoyed a busy but happy holiday season.  Marci, John and Kirkland have successfully completed the move to their new country home while Melinda, Paul, Baleigh, and McKayla spent Christmas zipping down the ski slopes in Colorado.  Dane, Nora, Stephen, and Carrie stayed close to home for Christmas and enjoyed some terrific family time.  What a blessing!

Christmas is a truly special time of year but so much more for true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.  I dare say however, that even  many Christians  sprint through the Christmas season with little time for reflection on exactly what has occurred that is so worthy of celebration. 

I found myself at one point  feeling more that a little harassed by all there was yet to do in preparation for Christmas at our house.  I was playing one of my favorite Christmas CD’s trying to promote some “Christmas spirit” as I worked away.  It wasn’t helping.  I couldn’t mask the fact that I was tired, frustrated and a bit annoyed with the  world at large.  Then,  just as suddenly and as quietly as winter snow begins to fall, the Christmas Spirit began to soften my heart and open my ears. 

The most beautiful refrain drifted across my heart as the CD played a song I’d heard a dozen times before. 
                O, Rose of Bethlehem,
                How precious, pure and sweet.
                Born to glorify the Father,
                Born to wear the thorns for me.
--Selah, “Rose of Bethlehem”
I was crushed that I had missed the point.  In my selfish efforts to make the holidays what I thought they were supposed to be I was missing the real reason for it all.

 “I’ve been a Christian too long to fall for this,” I thought.  But I had done it.  I began to weep .  I stopped to pray, no, to worship as I should have been doing all along.  I asked God to forgive my tunnel vision and move me to where He wanted me to be in celebrating this wondrous Person born so many years ago.

God’s Son, stepping from eternal glory into time and the limitations of the tiny form of a human baby--  He came knowing what they would do to Him on the Cross.  He came knowing what I would do to Him by my sin, and yet He came.  That soft sweet baby on the Christmas cards came for no other reason than to seek and to save us--you and me and the whole rest of the world.

I’m so thankful at Christmas and always that God chose to wear the thorns for me in the Person of His precious Son, Jesus Christ.   My prayer for Embrace and for each of you in the coming year is that we will choose as Christ did to glorify the Father in all that we do.

Love in Christ in 2006--

By Nora Truhett
Embrace
http://www.embraceministry.com

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