Christmas Tradition

Today was the official kick-off to Christmas for me. We shopped months ago, decorated weeks and weeks ago, and baked yummy treats last week. But today was THE DAY the Christmas begins for me. A local church had a live nativity that we attended this afternoon - twice. (Once was just not enough for my little R.) We also drove around Candy Cane Lane to see the lights. But the best of all was hearing my son pray tonight after devotions...

But, to back up a little bit...

I love Christmas and the traditions that means for our family. I honestly probably do a better job at teaching the Christmas story to R than I do Easter. R still struggles with Jesus as a grown up, so we have concentrated our efforts on Jesus as a baby/little boy and his reason for coming from that angle. Anyway, we have regular family devotions reading various parts of the Christmas story during the month of December, and we do these names of Jesus ornaments put out by Family Life named "Adornaments". These ornaments go over various names of Jesus and what they mean. R's prayer tonight made me realize that the traditions are not for naught!

"Dear Jesus,
I just want to thank you for who you are. Thank you that you came as a baby to die for our sins. Thank you that you are our door to heaven. Thank you that you are our Good Shepherd, our Savior, and our Immanuel. Thank you that you are with me all the time. Amen."

Thank you, God, that R is learning about You through our meager attempts. Thank you for using us to teach another generation.