Oh Christmas Card...

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.       Luke 2:19

I love Christmas cards. I love receiving them, I love giving them. I like gold foil and nativity scenes and family photos. I look forward each year to getting the letters that tell, however brief, our friend's stories, of their life and their year. 

Each year we also receive a few Christmas miracles. They come in the form of cards that look like this:

Now, sometimes these cards contain little presents and those are wonderful too. This year they made the difference in getting our kids some of their special requests for Christmas. But really, that's not my Christmas miracle. My Christmas miracle lies in that this card exists at all, and that someone went to a store and looked for it.

Someone stood in front of a card rack and searched for a card… 

just for their pastor. 

Someone read through generic cards and decided 

that this one was it. 

Someone wrote a note thanking my husband and our family 

for faithfully serving.

Every Christmas congregational life touches my heart in a new way. I look at my harried husband, crafting sermons, leading services, checking on shut-ins, and eeking in all the extras for Christmas, and then I look around at people and wonder if they notice. Not notice him, or me, or anything earthly. But do they notice that our God is a God who came to them, just for each of them, and it's a struggle in this world to bear the load of a thousand people who don't know and don't care. 

Then the cards come. It goes a long way in a pastor's heart to hear that what they do makes a difference in someone's life. That just by being them, by being faithful, by representing a God of Love and Comfort, people have been touched and it has mattered. It goes a long way in my pastor's wife heart to not be the only one telling him that. 

So thank you card companies and thank you members of the Body. Your Christmas card has a special place in our lives and a special place, treasured in our hearts.