{"id":29430,"date":"2020-12-27T03:30:37","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T11:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/?p=29430"},"modified":"2020-12-21T13:20:07","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T21:20:07","slug":"december-27-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2020\/12\/27\/december-27-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"December 27, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"\"<\/p>\n

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”\u00a0<\/em>John 3:16<\/p>\n

Perfect Holiday<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ahh…the blissful joy of decorating for Christmas! The beautiful tree, placed in the perfect spot, tastefully bejeweled with flickering lights, memory-laden ornaments, sparkling tinsel, and topped with a glittering star. The glowing candles placed decoratively around the house. The mantel topped with festive holiday pine and ornaments. The glowing fireplace and the stockings hung with precision. The holiday music. The children helping decorate with smiles on their sweet faces and Christmas jammies on their cute little bodies. The smell of fresh pine and cinnamon, the sugar cookies, the candy canes, the Nativity scenes, the holiday DVDs–joyful, serene, memorable. If only the photographers from “Perfect Holiday” magazine would show up at the door!<\/p>\n

And then life jolts me back to reality. The Christmas tree, stuck in the only corner where it will fit, is decorated from child-height down with unbreakable plastic ornaments (mostly in one spot), plastic candy canes, and topped with a leaning, lighted star. The holiday music is being drowned out by the Frozen<\/em> video shouting from the TV. The holiday tablecloth is already falling off the table. Dinner dishes are piled in the sink. The kids have pulled out every single decoration and left them lying all over the floor in this room and the next. Speaking of the kids…one is chasing the other making that one scream, one has no pants on, one has eaten every candy cane left within reach, and another is crying, for no known reason, at the upper end of the decibel range. I can’t find my cell phone–it’s in here somewhere–and I’m exhausted. It’s just beginning to look a lot like Christmas and at this rate it may not finish looking like Christmas until some time in February. Chaotic, noisy, messy… please don’t let anyone come to the door!<\/p>\n

And yet…there is love here. It’s the heart of Christmas, isn’t it? God gave His only Son…God gave His most perfect gift…to us…the most imperfect people. What unfathomable love.<\/p>\n

Heavenly Father-God, how can You have that kind of love for us? Thank You for giving us Your perfect Son…Your Perfect Gift. Thank You for loving us with that kind of love. In Jesus’ name. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-7EG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29433,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29430\/revisions\/29433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}