One of my favorite parts of Christmas is decorating the ol’ family Christmas tree.

Most people have ornaments from places like Pier One and Hobby Lobby and all those trendy places, but most of the ornaments on this tree are anything but trendy.

A lot of these ornaments look like they were crafted by kids, because a lot of them were. Leigh (my sister) and I are represented on the tree by lots of those paper ornaments that probably wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else. But they mean a lot to me.

Many of the decorations have the year on them from when they first became a part of the infamous Johnson Family Tree. Some go back to the 80’s. A few even go back before that. Some are even older than I am.

We have ornaments for all the dead pets, too. That amounts to three dogs and one parakeet for those of you who are keeping score.

Each one taken individually, they are not really all that pretty. But each one holds memories that can’t be bought, so to me they are priceless.

Somehow, when they are all put together, they look beautiful.

I guess that’s kind of like the Church. Individually, we may not look like much. We may not even amount to much in the eyes of most people. But put together, we become something amazing and beautiful and powerful. We become the very hands and feet of God. We are the very body of Christ present to the world.

What most people would look at once and throw in the garbage, Jesus takes and makes into something grand. Ephesians 2:10 says that we are heaven’s poetry etched onto human lives.

All that from some old decorations. Wow. Maybe I’ll look at those old ornaments differently this year.