Christmas musings

I heard a Christmas reading at an Advent service about 7 years ago which moved me and has stuck with me ever since. Here is the main idea: God chose Winter, the bleakest, darkest season of the year to send Jesus to earth. All of nature was asleep or dead. It is typical of the way God works in terms of irony. The King of Glory comes to earth-not in a burst of glory, or to a palace, but in obscurity, within a damp, smelly, animal shelter, and in winter. So it is that Jesus comes into our lives when we feel the bleakest, and most desperate. When things are worse than they've ever been, hope has died, and we have noone else with solutions, He suddenly appears, in the cold and in the dark. Later it was in the Spring, a time of rebirth, when Jesus was crucified. Just as the birds were starting to sing, and new life was blooming, Jesus died and was put into the grave. Just when we finally thought we could hope again. What a time of year for life to end...but it was not the end. Then, and only then, did God have the last word. And today, like then, we can have Hope, because He came to turn despair, and death and darkness on its head. I'm thankful for His indescribable gift....