My elementary drama/choir group is preparing for their Christmas production, “Angels Aware”. It’s a unique perspective on the Christmas story – set in heaven, when the angels first hear about God’s plan to save humanity. I hadn’t ever thought about the heavenly response to God sending His son to earth. This production proposes that perhaps the angels were shocked at the news. Why would anyone leave heaven? It’s crazy! Especially to go to a place where folks are, in the words of one of my angels, “So, so…sinful”?

Some of my littlest angels

But as the story progresses, the angels – and the audience – learn that God is doing this because He loves His creation so much. He is leaving the comfort and glory and peace of heaven to go down to a place where He’ll be rejected and ultimately killed, all out of his selfless, amazing, unfathomable love. It really is amazing.

God’s mercy is so undeserved, so incredible. But, if you’re like me, you can sometimes forget how incredible this gift of salvation is. I can take for granted that I get to spend eternity in heaven. I can forget that I have a Savior who loved me enough to come to earth as a baby, just so I could know Him.

This Christmas season, I am reminded “out of the mouths of babes” of the wonder of the Christmas season. I am reminded that the gifts we give others should remind us of the greatest Gift that God gave us. The songs we sing about Jesus’s birth aren’t just seasonal favorites, but arrows pointing to this baby in a manger who would become the Savior of all mankind.

It’s so easy to get lost in the fun and busyness of this season that we forget to slow down and really ponder what it’s all about…WHO it’s all about. In the words of one of the songs from this production,

“What love the Father has for us

Though He knows what we are

He would come from afar

To show us we can be forgiven”

Merry CHRISTmas, friends! And may we never forget the Reason for the Season.