He Came

The last day of 2010 and the first day of 2011 were filled with wonderful moments of family bliss. If you only knew what had really been going on here during the past month, you’d understand what a welcome change these days were. The oldest two children were in serious danger of not getting Christmas presents. We even told them so, and it wasn’t an idle threat.

You’d think they would have shaped up on Christmas Eve, but no. At around 3:30 in the morning, Philip got up to tell them to be quiet and alert them that their new no-earlier-than wake up time was now 7:15.

At 4:30 I got up to tell them to be quiet and that now they could not get up until 7:30 and if I had to tell them to be quiet again that there would be no presents for them. And for goodness sake, everybody get back into their own beds.

I heard them get up at the appointed hour and thunder downstairs, sounding for all the world like 12 children instead of 3. Boo came back up and into our room. He looked at us with such relief and said simply, “He came!”

He meant Santa, of course. But in seeing in his face the realization of how his behavior had jeopardized his Christmas presents and the happiness that he came anyway, I got struck with the true meaning of Christmas.

We are sinners and we’ve been warned. Time and time again we fail just to do as we’re told. We swear we’ll do better and maybe we do, at least for a little while. Then we fail again or fail in a different way. And yet, He came. We totally don’t deserve it.

How blessed we are to be loved so unconditionally that the best gift ever came anyway.

Yes, Boo, He came.

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