For the Bowie family, Christmas is a time to celebrate the
birth of Jesus and to reflect upon what his birth means to us. This year when the Christmas season came we
were trying to get reestablished from our house fire. Each day was long and I
personally felt stretched to encourage and assist my husband in all of his
tasks and care for the children, as well as to make our temporary house a
home.
When it came time for our annual 12 days of Christmas and
our winter break, my heart yearned to reach out to others, to display His love.
There was so much on my plate, yet we all desired to bless others as we had in
the past and that’s what we did. We put the daunting tasks of the fire aside
and started baking and preparing for our outreach projects. We also shopped for
other children and gathered food from our pantry. As we did that, God did what God does; He was
our provider. He sent ones to share their
Christmas decorations, ones to shop for our family, ones to share from the
treasures of their heart and home. I
became overwhelmed with His goodness.
In this, a time that could be very dark, Jesus has been our
light. He has shown us much grace. He has provided us with His goodness through
His people; family, friends and strangers. When the fire happened I prayed “Lord
please don’t let us go through this alone“. For we were so ignorant as to how
to handle a situation such as this. But God! He is a light unto our path
providing us with much wisdom and peace. He guided us to focus not on ourselves,
but on others and He so kindly focused on us. What an awesome God!
As always, on Christmas morning each of us had an
opportunity to share what the birth of Jesus means to us personally. I was so
moved by the responses of our children; they saw Jesus as our light, our
sustainer, our provider, our God. Their testimony of His goodness, through this
fire, blessed my heart. Oh, for each of them to recognize Him for themselves.
What a Christmas gift!
