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IIn the white-bordered photo taken with my aunt's Kodak Instamatic Camera in 1966, my 3-year-old face registers unfiltered surprise and delight as I react to seeing the shiny, red, ride-on fire truck parked in front of the Christmas tree. The truck has a clanging bell, activated by just a tug on the string! I can't wait to jump in and peddle!
It's fun for me to look at this favored family relic and let childhood memories flood through me. But it's even more fun for me to compare that picture to the one I took myself in 1994: My young son wears exactly the same expression on his sweet face when he feasts his eyes on a shiny, red, ride-on Power Wheels motorcycle. The bike has realistic engine sounds, activated by just a push of a button! He can't wait to jump on and zoom! I'm tickled to notice the strong similarities in two snapshots taken 26 years apart. It's not so much that my son and I look alike (most people say he resembles his dad far more than me), but that the exuberance in our eyes matches identically. It's the look of pure joy. It's the twinkle of undashed hope. It's the euphoria that comes not from receiving the coolest toy, but from realizing all the imaginative possibilities which are on the verge of coming true! There were no cameras to document the first Christmas, the birth of the baby named Jesus, but the vivid stories told in the biblical books of Mark and Luke serve like snapshots pasted into God's family photo album. If we want to know what God is like, we only need to page through the pictures of Jesus. The family resemblance is unmistakable!
and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. Hebrews 1:3 More than 26 years later, in fact, more than 2,000 years later, what inspires his followers to keep following is the promise of realizing what we most crave: pure joy, undashed hope, and the knowledge that all of God's imaginative possibilities for humanity really can come true.
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Christmas Blessings to You,
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