Loving Christmas

I love Christmas.  I love the lights, the decorations, looking for presents, baking, music, and the reason.  I feel sad that it also brings triggers, unreasonable expectations, frayed tempers, and many other aspects of the season that has nothing to do with the reason.  I am a believer that the reason for the season is Christ.  Wise men still seek him.  Good will to all men, women and children is still a wonderful goal.  Glad tidings still shared.  The angels sing and those that believe hear their songs.  Song sings in our hearts when we help one another, when we care for the poor, when we share with others, when we seek ways to come unto Christ.  He came as a baby and showed us the way to return to our Father in Heaven and broke the bonds of death so we could enter into eternity. 

“Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty, and then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself…. While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executors gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth — His coat. When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.”
“Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.”

—The famous essay, One Solitary Life
http://voice-wilderness.org/more-great-quotes-about-jesus-christ/

I found a link to what the internet thinks is the original version.
http://www.anointedlinks.com/one_solitary_life_original.html