During last year’s advent season, I read The Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp. The beautiful reflections, thoughts, and Scripture focused my thoughts on Jesus during the season of his birth. Voskamp’s quote from the back cover of the book sums up my desire for the Christmas season:
I don’t want a Christmas you can buy. I don’t want a Christmas you can make. What I want is a Christmas you can hold. A Christmas that holds me, remakes me, revives me. I want a Christmas that whispers, Jesus.
I highly encourage anyone of you to read it if you long for a more meaningful, restful Christmas.
I was very excited recently when my sister-in-law gave me Vokamp’s new book, Unwrapping the Greatest Gift: A Family Celebration of Christmas.
We plan to start reading it together tomorrow as a family. I look forward to sharing with my kids the awe of the advent season and the amazing gift that God gave to the world during that first Christmas. Looking ahead to the first reading, I read Voskamp’s words:
Jesus’ love had to get to you in a big world, Jesus’ love had to come to you in a loud world, Jesus had to break into the world and rescue you with a love that would always wrap safe around you. So Jesus slipped into the world as tiny as a searching green shoot, as small as a reaching new baby.
More than the excitement of the Christmas tree, the anticipation of the gift on Christmas morning, and the making of family memories and traditions (all wonderful aspects of the season) – THIS is what I want my kids to come to love this Christmas, the tiny baby Jesus, God’s gift to all of us.
