Tim’s Daily Bread Devotional 12.25.21

By December 25, 2021Daily Bread

Good morning!

I hope this day finds you and your family well. I invite you to take a few moments with me to read and reflect upon today’s scripture selection — and to carry these thoughts with you into your day.

Today’s Scripture: Luke 2:1-7 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

 1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

 

Tim’s Devotional Reflection for Today

Merry Christmas!

My most memorable childhood Christmas was when I was seven or eight years old.  We lived in the country about three miles from the Carthage, Texas town square.  My grandmother lived next door in the house she and my grandfather built in about 1923.  At the time they built the house, they planted pecan trees throughout the front yard and by the time of my eighth Christmas those trees were large and, most years, very productive.  My grandfather had died five years earlier and we had built a house and moved next door to her not long before that Christmas.

My grandmother sold pecans every year.  She didn’t advertise—it was just word of mouth.  This particular fall I was old enough to help gather pecans, spread them out on the boards laid across sawhorses, and sort them.  I was old enough to crack the pecans my grandmother was going to shell, to use the scale to weigh out bags of pecans and even occasionally take the money and hand over the pecans.  All this important work was done on weekdays after school and on Saturdays during the harvest season.  My grandmother paid me for my work.  It was the first money I had ever earned, and I remember well the satisfaction and pride I felt.

After the last Saturday of selling the pecans, my grandmother took me to the square to buy Christmas presents for my mother and father, my brothers and sister, and my grandparents.  I remember it so well.  She called a cab because she never learned to drive and, as far as I can remember, it was my first ride in a taxi.  Normally, my parents took her where she needed to go, but she wanted us to do our Christmas shopping without prying eyes.  We went to Perry’s Five and Ten Cent Store, to Hawthorne’s Dry Goods, to M and M Toggery and other stores on the square (pretty much all the shopping was downtown at the time).  I was—for the first time in my young life—able to pick out presents and buy them without my mother and with money I earned.  I can remember that day so well.  When we returned to my grandmother’s house, we got the packages out of the trunk of the taxi and took them in quickly—just in case someone might be watching from next door.  We wrapped the presents and I filled out the tags on each one.

Here’s the funny thing:  I don’t remember a single present under the tree.  I honestly don’t!  I have tried to remember opening gifts that Christmas morning and I have tried to visualize what was under the tree.  I have tried to remember what I told Santa Claus when I visited him in his little house that they put up in the park on the town square every year, even though by this time I was too sophisticated to do so.  But I can’t.  What I do remember to this day is the best gift I received that year—the BEST.  It was the gift my grandmother gave me without even knowing it.  She gave me the gift of giving.  It was a simple thing—a very simple thing—yet it took my experience of life to a new level.  I had received and received and received from all the caring people around me.  Now I was able to give—really give—for the first time in my life and I experienced the pure joy of it.

Among the simple messages of Christmas is the gift God gives us in Jesus and Jesus’ call to give as we have received.  The first chapter of the gospel of John says that through Jesus we have all received grace upon grace.  What a gift it is to give graciously in every way in response to what we have received.

 

Joy to the world the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her King.

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And heaven and nature sing.

Thank you for sharing this early moment of your day with me, with God, and with the words and reflections I hope you will carry with you throughout the coming day and night.

Grace and Peace,


Dr. Tim Bruster
Senior Pastor