Oh Christmas Card

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 from people who took a bit of extra time to hand select a card, just for my family.

Someone stood in front of a card rack and searched for a card just for their pastor.

Someone wrote a note thanking my husband and our family for faithfully serving.

It blows my mind to imagine it and it touches my heart to be a part of it.

Every Christmas, congregational life refreshes my heart in a new way.

I look at my 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?  It’s a hard reality in this world – there are thousands 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. These cards are no small thing.

Thank you for building up, reaching out, and including us, every year.