Dec 25 2007
Merry Christmas!
I’m back in Houston, Texas spending some quality time with my folks. They’re a loud, high energy bunch, and I love them dearly. Coming from a traditional Vietnamese family, I discovered on this visit that my kin had expanded some. Everywhere I turn I’m seeing little munchkins running about, mostly infants and some a bit older.
At one point in the festivities, I looked around at all the members of my clan and thought of the seeming incongruities created by living in America. My family are Americans through and through, and they have become Texans through and through. I imagine that from the outside to people unaccustomed to the incredible melting pot that is America, they might well scratch their noggin how one can be American, Vietnamese, and Texans at the same time.
All my brothers speak with a Texan twang. They do it unconsciously and they’d probably deny it if anyone were to point it out. My oldest brother actually sounds like a southern trailer park tow-truck driver over the phone.
I thank our Lord Jesus Christ that my family made it to these shores where they can have freedom and experience life in abundance instead of being left in the jungles of Vietnam to be killed or “re-educated” after the fall of Saigon.
How far we’ve come from those overcrowded boats and refugee camps to this night…
It is now morning and a hush has fallen over the city. There are thousands of men, women and children streaming into churches this day for the celebration of the birth of our Lord Jesus. They come from all walks of life. The rich. The poor. The Whites. The Blacks. The Hispanics. The Asians. The large and the small. The educated and the illiterate. The hungry and the fed.
The Kingdom of God is not about externals; whether you’re popular and well loved or not, whether you drive a brand spanking new car or a old rusted beater. It’s about individual souls making it home to their Creator God, and on this day over two thousand years ago, our Creator took on our fallen state and became a Man.
And, thus, hope entered our world on that day; it is the hope that we won’t be tossed to our fate into the grip of death, to deteriorate into the abyss eternally away from the Light and Love of God. We were offered a path home through Jesus’s sacrifice at Calvary, and that offer stands to this day.
Merry Christmas to all you readers. May the Lord bless you and keep you on this holy day, for as the song goes,
Joy to the world! The Lord is come.
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room;
And heav’n and nature sing,
And heav’n and nature sing.
And heav’n and heav’n and nature sing.