Christmas Sunday

I gave a short talk in church today for Christmas~

12-22-2013
Today I want to tell you about two memorable Christmas’s for me.

It was 1991 I had been trying to be good all year and what I was hoping Santa would bring me was a PJ Sparkles Doll. When you pushed a heart on the dolls chest she lit up and sparkled all over, even the bow on her head lit up. She was awesome! And I wanted her so badly. Christmas morning came and I unwrapped my present …. there she was in all her pajama glory.  I was ecstatic and she was my favorite doll for years and years.

My most memorable Christmas is different kind of story…

It was 2011. I had been experiencing the darkest time of my life.  Hope was something I struggled to hold on to, and I felt like it was slipping through my fingers with each passing day. I sat in Church the Sunday before Christmas… like today. I was weary, weak and tired. I didn't know how much more I could bear. We began to sing…

It was a Christmas Hymn…

I sang the words to the first verse. 

And then the second,

Then, something happened.  

Christmas was changed for me forever as I sang the words, “Hail the heaven born prince of peace, Hail the Son of righteousness, LIGHT and LIFE to all he brings risen with HEALING IN HIS WINGS.”  If anyone needed a savoir I did.  I needed Him, His grace, His love and His rescuing hand. In a matter of microscopic moments I felt as if I was an angel there at his birth and I truly was singing praises that he lived and was born to die for me. The Joy that filled me was overwhelming and I sobbed quietly in my seat.

For the first time in my life I was desperate for a savior and the knowledge that my loving Father in heaven sent him to my rescue filled me with the hope I needed so badly in order to carry on.  My trials did not suddenly disappear after that but my hope was filled enough so that I could carry through for the time frame that the Lord saw fit for me to bear.

The Savior’s atonement is the most precious and personal gift we could ever receive.  It is the most precious and personal gift I have ever received.

In the article “Come let us adore him” in the December ensign it reads:

Seven hundred years before that first Christmas, the prophet Isaiah penned a messianic prophecy that the Savior later read to His fellow villagers of Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1; see alsoLuke 4:18–19).

we are all captive—captive to the corruption and weakness of mortal bodies and subject to the temptations of the flesh, to infirmity, and, ultimately, to death—and we all have need to be set free.

Whatever binds us the Lord Jesus Christ, the great Immanuel, came to set us free. He proclaims liberty to the captives and freedom from the bonds of death and the prison of sin, ignorance, pride, and error. It was prophesied that He would say to the prisoners, “Go forth” (Isaiah 49:9). The only condition of our freedom is that we come unto Him with broken hearts and contrite spirits, repent, and seek to do His will.

Isaiah 9:6 reads:  “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The prince of peace.”

I have learned that the fibers of Christ’s Love are woven through everything. It binds us to our loved ones. It fills in all the gaps we will experience during earth life and patches up any holes that need repair.  His love is permanent, eternal and real. Through our saviors love we will never be alone.

My most memorable Christmas had nothing to do with presents or circumstances; my most memorable Christmas was when I saw the gift of the baby in the manger in Bethlehem for what it truly was.  More importantly, I saw  the gift and its personal message of love to me, from my ever watching Father in heaven.

He was born for me.

He was born for you.

“Born that man no more may die. Born to raise the sons of earth.  Born to give them second birth. Hark the Herald Angels sing, Glory to the new born King.”