Reason for the Season

Happy Birthday Jesus! Can you believe it, time flies doesn’t it? Feels like it was just yesterday when we celebrated your last birthday. You know, I have been wondering if anybody ever remembered to greet you a Happy Birthday? If anybody remembered that You are the Reason for the Season.

You might be asking how are we going to celebrate your special day? Well, it will be simple as always. Just how I want it to be. It will be spent with family, we will share a modest meal, watch a Christmas movie (maybe), definitely a chat with family back home is on the agenda and of course attend a church service in your Honor.

Thank you, for the lemons that find its way on our plate. Lemons that make us stronger, our family closer, oh and those lemons that keep our faith in check. You know those lemons that make us realize that You are all we need, of how good and loving and great You are.

Thank you for your gifts and blessings of family, the warmth and security of a home, good health, food, job and friends.

Thank you for giving us so much and yet expecting so little from us. Thank you for giving your life for us, for your gift of Grace and Salvation.

I cannot give you much other than a thankful and loving heart (that in spite of the difficulties we have, I can still feel how much you love us).

I wish that in my own little way, I was able to share to others Your greatness, that Your love can still be seen and felt when life hands us lemons and beyond the glitter and the golds.

You are truly the “Reason for the Season!”

Happy Birthday!

All my love,
Charina

simple gifts…..

Fifteen days until Christmas – the annual celebration of the Birth of Jesus! Remember, the Reason for the Season?

Memories of Christmas past….simple meal to enjoy with the family and checking the stockings or plain old socks (hanging by the window) on Christmas morning. This is how we celebrate Christmas when I was growing up in our quiet little town in the Philippines. And, no I didn’t forget to mention about checking the gifts under the Christmas Tree. It’s just that we don’t have a Christmas Tree, not that we don’t believe in it, just that we cannot afford it. We don’t expect or ask for gifts from Santa either. But you know what?, those were one of the best Christmas memories I had that I never failed to share with my daughter, that I will forever be grateful with (to my parents). Simple joys, simple gifts…

So, what makes my Christmas, a merry one? It is not the glitter and the golds nor those boxes under the tree. It is family near and far, a home to keep us warm, a modest meal to share with my family, seeing the joy in my daughter’s eyes, the gift of life and good health and the blessings of God’s grace.

Simple gifts….blessed and thankful I am.

So, what makes your Christmas a merry one?