One of my favorite epiphanies about Jesus came when I heard (or read) that Jesus’ first recorded words came when His parents found Him in the temple after He went missing. He spoke of how He must be about His Father’s business. His last words before He died were, “It is finished.” Everything in between was His Father’s business — that means you and that means me and that means those for whom He came to seek and to save.

That’s our business. To seek out the lost and help them find their way to Jesus. Like Jacob Marley said to Scrooge that Christmas Eve, “Mankind was my business,” and not the obsessive hoarding of wealth and titles.

Tonight, I am thankful that I was my Father’s business. So were you. That mission that started in Bethlehem and ended in Jerusalem was to find and save us. Jesus wasn’t the one who was lost. Not really. We were.

I read recently where in ye olden days, the Christmas celebrations didn’t cease on December 25. They just got started.

Apparently, Christmas wasn’t just a one day shindig. It was a 12 day feast. That sounds like my kind of party.

But my second day of Christmas saw me going back to work in the cold rain. Not much joyful or triumphant about that.

At least I have my Vintage Christmas stories to entertain me on my long trek to work. They’re all short stories and poems from the likes of Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, L. M. Montgomery, and others. It’s so very 19th century.

My plan is to watch my Christmas movies until at least January 6 (or whenever the Day of Epiphany is that marks the official end of Christmas). I may watch past that if the mood hits me.

It will be a bit sad to see all the festive decorations come down for another 11 months or so. There’s something about lit-up houses and yards full of seasonal characters that always lifts my spirits on a grey and cloudy day.

But I still refuse to let Christmas go just yet.

“Let the just rejoice,
for their justifier is born.
Let the sick and infirm rejoice,
For their saviour is born.
Let the captives rejoice,
For their Redeemer is born.
Let slaves rejoice,
for their Master is born.
Let free men rejoice,
For their Liberator is born.
Let All Christians rejoice,
For Jesus Christ is born” (St. Augustine of Hippo, AD 354-440).

Another Christmas Day has come and gone, but this time I refuse to say that Christmas is over. It’s not like the baby in that manger that we celebrate and sing about simply ceased to exist.

No, but He grew up into the sinless Son of God who chose the way that led to Calvary so that we might choose the way that leads back to God. He chose the nails, so that we might be healed. He chose all the suffering, so that we might finally know peace.

That is something to celebrate long after December 25 is over.

“The Word of the Father, by Whom all time was created, was made flesh and was born in time for us.

He, without whose divine permission no day completes its course, wished to have one day set aside for His human birth.

In the bosom of His Father, He existed before all the cycles of ages; born of an earthly mother, He entered upon the course of the years on this day.

The Maker of man became Man that He, Ruler of the stars, might be nourished at His mother’s breast;

that He, the Bread, might hunger;

that He, the Fountain, might thirst;

that He, the Light, might sleep;

that He, the Way, might be wearied by the journey;

that He, the Truth, might be accused by false witnesses;

that He, the Judge of the living and the dead, might be brought to trial by a mortal judge;

that He, Justice, might be condemned by the unjust;

that He, Discipline, might be scourged with whips;

that He, the Foundation, might be suspended upon a cross;

that Courage might be weakened;

that Healer might be wounded;

that Life might die.

To endure these and similar indignities for us, to free us, unworthy creatures, He who existed as the Son of God before all ages, without a beginning, deigned to become the Son of Man in these recent years.

He did this although He who submitted to such great evils for our sake had done no evil and although we, who were the recipients of so much good at His hands, had done nothing to merit these benefits.

Begotten by the Father, He was not made by the Father.

He was made Man in the mother whom He Himself had made, so that He might exist here for a while, sprung from her who could never and nowhere have existed except through His power” (Augustine of Hippo, Sermons 184-229: Sermons).

This is not the first time I’ve posted this poem here. In fact, I try to post it every year around this time because it speaks so beautifully to the true meaning of Christmas. That God should be born as a baby on a dirt floor in a stable is no less marvelous than that God should come into my heart and be born there.

God didn’t wait for me to get cleaned up or get my act together or finally figure out my life. He didn’t wait for me to come to Him. He came to me where I was in the middle of my mess and make me all those things I could never have made myself — clean, whole, pure, with a purpose.

May this poem still speak to you as it still speaks to me:

“Let the stable still astonish:
Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: ‘Yes,
Let the God of all the heavens and earth
Be born here, in this place’?

Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
of our hearts and says, ‘Yes,
let the God of Heaven and Earth
be born here–
in this place’ (Leslie Leyland Fields, Let the Stable Still Astonish).