Many years ago Billy Graham shared the following story with his oldest son. I believe it encapsulates the Christmas story.

“My son and I were walking along the road close to where we lived one day and we stepped on an anthill. We looked down and several of the ants were wounded and others were dying. Their house was destroyed, and I thought to myself and I said to my son, ‘I wish we could go down there and help them and tell them that we didn’t mean to do it, that we loved those ants and wanted to help them, but we couldn’t do it’. And my son said: ‘Dad, we can’t. We’re too big and they’re too little.’

We were too big and they were too little. How in the world could we communicate with something so small? There was no way, and it suddenly dawned on me that God looked down from Heaven and saw this planet and saw all these people like ants crushed, hurting, dying, because of our sin. God said, ‘I love them and I want to do something about it’. Do you know what God did? God became a baby who grew into a man and that’s who Jesus Christ was, and is. He decided to come down to provide us a way back to God.”

So when we think about the purpose of Christmas, it is God’s love fully expressed in the gift of His Son. His gift made it possible for us to forever live with Him. As the wonderful verse states in a familiar and favorite Christmas hymn, “Peace on Earth and Mercy Mild, God and Sinners Reconciled.”

Merry Christmas!