December Kick-off with a Christmas Mood

We just arrived home from a Christmas concert featuring Casting Crowns, Natalie Grant, Avalon, Michael English, and Denver and the Mile High Orchestra. Even though we planned to attend this concert, it sort of turned into an impromptu attendance when we realized we had the wrong date in mind and had to scramble to get there tonight. Get there we did, though, and it was an enjoyable evening. I am usually quite picky with my concert attendance, and under normal circumstances I would have shied from part of this line-up, but for Christmas music, it couldn't have been much better, unless Steven Curtis Chapman had been in the mix! I have been enjoying non-stop Christmas songs on XM since last week, but there is something missing in White Christmas and Silver Bells that one can only find in the Christmas carol. "Oh, Holy Night" and "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" are my favorite carols with "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" not far behind. Actually, I love to sing all of them, and I love to mangle them on the piano as I attempt to put my heart into my fingers. It's even been cold here in La which of course helps set the Christmas mood for this northern southerner. Anyway, what a wonderful reminder we had on this first day of advent. Christmas is not the shopping or the decorations or the tree or the presents or even family. Christmas is the celebration of Christ coming to earth to be both human and God for the eventual redemption of the human race for whosoever will accept him. May we all remember this, no matter how bleak our situation may be this Christmas. When the angels told the shepherds that there was to be peace on earth, they didn't mean there would never be economic hard times or famine or war or sickness. The point was that if and as Jesus lives within us, he would bring us peace to live in this life, come what may. May you all have peace on earth this Christmas, beginning today, that will last all year, every year.