What Christmas means to me
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Richville Rundown
Sheila Ward
School is out until next year! Everyone is excited now; however, parents will probably be looking forward to it starting back after about a week! Teachers and students won’t think the Christmas break is long enough.
Providence Baptist had a great kid’s night out event, making homemade ornaments, decorating the tree in the fellowship hall and eating pizza and homemade ice cream.
Last Sunday night we had our Christmas program with Christmas songs and scripture foretelling the birth of Jesus. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed plenty of snacks in the fellowship hall.
Last week, Providence Baptist had 11 people, including me, go to Atlanta to work at the Operation Christmas Child Processing Center. We were scheduled for a six-hour shift in which we opened boxes, checked for inappropriate items, added filler items as needed, taped the boxes, and sorted according to boy/girl and ages back into large cartons.
There were about 650 people working that day at 50 stations around this huge warehouse. Our group was assigned station 46, and we processed approximately a thousand boxes during this time with the entire facility processing about 54,000 while we were there.
Three or four times, everything stopped to view a short video of children receiving the boxes, then placing our hands on a box while we prayed over those boxes. The boxes that were processed that day were going to Cameroon, Africa. It was amazing to see everyone working together to complete the mission of sending these boxes to boys and girls around the world with an opportunity to share Jesus in the process.
It was a long day with our travel time included, but worth the effort. I look forward to us doing it again next year. If you have the opportunity, take it. You’ll be tired at the end of the day, but it’ll be worth it for the blessing you receive.
It’s hard to believe that Christmas is almost here. Since there won’t be a paper next week, I wanted to share what Christmas means to me. When I was young, Christmas was more about presents than the family around me or even Jesus’ birth. But as I got older, especially after marriage and having my own children, Christmas began to be different.
I look back and sometimes I realize that the true meaning of Christmas was lost with the pressure of being a parent, providing gifts for a wonderful Christmas for my girls. While I’m sure they remember some of the gifts that “Santa” brought, I hope and pray that it was the fun of being a family and giving thanks for the birth of Christ. While our family reads the Christmas story from Luke each Christmas morning, I pray they each realize the greatness that God is to send His Son that we might be saved and have everlasting life.
So, I don’t have a Bible verse to share this week, but I encourage you to read the Christmas story in Luke 2:1-20. But don’t just read it as a story, but as the miracle that His birth was, and just as Mary, ponder it in your heart! Merry Christmas to each of you!
So, as we enter this Christmas season we need to remember the reason for the season: Jesus!
