That’s right, people. There are only 11 more days until Christmas Eve. Have you bought all your presents? Have you left anyone off your list? Will those packages from amazom.com get there on time if you order them tomorrow?

There are so many questions. So many reasons to fret and worry and panic. But only one thing truly matters.

In 11 Days, we celebrate the most important arrival in history. Which also happens to be the least conspicuous arrival in history.

Who knew then that a baby born to a peasant couple in backwoods Bethlehem would end up being the Savior of the world? Would anyone have guessed that the baby laying in a feeding trough in the middle of a barn was the Messiah?

That is what Advent and Christmas are all about. Not gifts, not food, not even family. Christmas is about Emmanuel– God with us. God for us. God in us.

I hope that removes the stress of trying to buy the perfect gift or create the perfect Christmas Eve dinner. All that we really need to worry about has been taken care of by this baby in a manger who grew up to be the man on the cross who later became the Man who walked out of the tomb after 3 days.

That is what Christmas is really all about, Charlie Brown.

I’m tired. All I want to do (after writing this masterpiece of a blog, of course) is to go to bed. And sleep until Sunday. Or at least past 6 am.

I fantasize about sleeping. Porn for me right now is a picture of a Sealy Serta mattress with flannel sheets and NO alarm clocks in sight. That’s sad.

Sometimes, I’ve been so tired that I literally couldn’t sleep. That seems ridiculous when you’re wide awake, but the more tired you get, the more you realize how true that is.

I love the verse that says how God never slumbers nor sleeps nor tires in watching over His children. When I get too tired to carry on, He carries me. When I shut down for 5-8 hours a night, God never does. There’s never a moment when God isn’t thinking about me and acting on my behalf, doing what’s best for me.

The same goes for you. It still boggles my mind that God can give attention to all His children and treat each one as if he or she were the only created being. He can love all of us and yet still love each of us as if we were the only one to love.

I still wish I could be like my cat sometimes. She never ever has any trouble falling asleep any time in any place at any time, even after having slept through most of the day. Lucky Lucy.

Jesus didn’t announce His coming the way I would have. Definitely not the way most mega-churches would have. They’d have had a multimedia blitz of advertisements months in advance. They would have launched Jesus as the next Christian superstar.

Instead, Jesus chose to arrive via an unwed teenage mother in a barn, announced by lowly shepherds. While it is true that Mary conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit, she wasn’t married to Joseph yet.

I love how a pastor put it: Jesus didn’t come as a Mighty Warrior so we’d step back in awe or as a King that we’d bow down in fear but as a Baby so that we might draw near.

But those shepherds? Who were they? Probably not the romanticized idea we have of them today. They were among the lowest of the low. They probably smelled like sheep, which isn’t a pleasant odor. They weren’t allowed in the temple despite the fact that they raised the sheep used in temple sacrifices. They were nobodies.

I love how the angels announced the good news to them first, of how this Jesus would be FOR all the people. For you. For me.

For all those who’ve ever felt unwanted and ignored in a crowd.

For all those who feel forgotten by friends and family and feel more alone than ever.
For those who can’t ever seem to get their act together or figure out their future.

For those who live daily with the shameful reminders of past failures and consequences of poor decisions.

For those who will never be popular or successful by the standards we normally define popularity and success.

For those who take care of smelly dumb sheep for a living.

For those whose good intentions and promises always end up as broken as they are.

For us. For all of us.

You like me. You really like me. Even as I type that, I can’t help hearing Jim Carrey’s voice a la Stanley Ipkis a la The Mask. That’s a great movie, but I seriously digress.

I was taught to say thank you and to always write thank you notes whenever someone gave me a gift. So here goes:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

You read my little blogs from the very beginning, even the ones I wrote at 2 a.m. and the ones where I indulged in a little TMI and the ones I evidently forgot to spell-check.

You told me how much you enjoyed my posts and I was invariably surprised to find out it was you that was reading them. It meant a lot (and still does).

It’s been 4 1/2 years and almost 1,600 posts and it has never not been worth it. I would have written all these even if they only had one person reading them (me). It still would have been so worth it, if only for the catharsis and the practice of writing and learning how to continue to improve how I express my thoughts. And I am still learning.

So thank you yet again. Maybe what I write won’t help every single person out there, but will speak to one person and inspire that person not to give up. Or maybe even they will be inspired to write their own blog. Who knows?

I know that Jon Acuff probably gets 45,000 views on one of his blogs. Probably before lunch. But to me that means that a LOT of you took time that could have been spent elsewhere reading my words that came from my heart. I will always be thankful for that and for you. You rock!

Around this time last year (or possibly the year before), I wrote about how your nativity set is wrong if it has wise men in it because they most likely didn’t show up to see Jesus until He was 1 or 2 years old and Joseph and Mary were living in a house.

I still hold to that. I’m not telling you to throw your wise men in the trash. What I am saying is to check what you’ve been told about the Christmas story against what the Bible actually says. That goes for anything, not just the Christmas story. FYI.

I read about a family who sets up their nativity scene with all the pieces except one. They leave out Jesus until Christmas night. That way there’s an anticipation, much like there was that first Christmas night.

I like that idea. As long as you don’t lose the baby Jesus or the dog doesn’t eat him. But there’s something to be said for making your own family traditions, especially ones that center around the Christ of Christmas.

I saw a nativity scene today that I loved. I don’t think it’s too sacrilegious (or at least I hope not). Besides, we don’t still worship an infant Jesus. We pray to and sing to and love and serve a Jesus who grew up and lived a perfect life and died a criminal’s death on a cross and rose again. All for you and me.

So here’s that nativity scene.

Pretty awesome, ain’t it?