Christmas

Omigosh has it really been so long since I wrote here??
Hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was very quiet which was lovely...
I wrote a drama for the church Advent service - we had fun; went through the story of Christ's birth and pulled people from the audience for every character... so we had lots of shepherds, cows, hens, pigs, etc. on stage.. we thought for a while there we wouldn't have enough people in the audience, the kids were dragging so many people out.
Each person had a prop, the census taker had a pen, the innkeeper's wife a rolling pin, the star - a star, naturally. And so on.
I told how each part of the story had been planned by God. Not one piece had been left to chance - the census was set to happen at just the right time, the shepherds weren't afraid of the angels, and in fact believed and followed them, the wise men saw the star at the right time.....
The fact that Jesus was born in a manger amongst the animals instead of somewhere fancy, warm or with other carers for himself and his mother was also part of God's plan. He was born amongst common people, the first people who greeted him were commoners, in fact people who were generally shunned (shepherds) as they were dirty smelly and not well educated.
Anyway, we worked our way to a full stage - and rather than a baby we placed a replica crown of thorns in the manger. That also was God's plan; the baby was born to die for us.
Then we emptied the stage by sending people off after explaining the gift they gave or were during the birth, i.e. the animals gave warmth, the innkeeper gave a room, Joseph married Mary even though he could have refused according to the morals of the day, and so on, untl all that was left was the angel, the star and the crown of thorns - all of God, all earthly touches were gone.
And once we took the star and the angel away all we were left with was the crown int the manger, and as God looked ahead from the Nativity to the cross, we also look ahead to His return to us..
So there you go, I didn't think I'd write that much here! It was noisy and busy but hopefully enough of it got through to people.
Our church also had 2 amazing Christmas eve services and one Christmas day, each was a blessing, Martin played piano and keyboard for them all so he was kept on stage...
So after that it was nice to stay home quiet for the day and the few days since.
I hope to write more here, my head is so full of stuff I need to write... and eve if no one ever reads it it's out of my brain!!!