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Christmas at the Movies: Week 4, Day 1

by David Joynt on December 24, 2017


Luke 2:1-7

 

The perfect Christmas is the perfect dinner, and the perfect tree,
with perfect presents at the perfect prices, when the family is in
the perfect mood and makes perfect conversation, following the
perfect Christmas Eve service that includes the perfect sermon
and perfect choir anthem. The perfect Christmas requires weeks
of planning, intensive preparation, serious spending, and a
suspension of everything ordinary, ugly, divisive, and unresolved.
In other words, the perfect Christmas is a fantasy, and a departure
from reality!

 

The first Christmas, by contrast, was not so perfect. A long tiring
journey by donkey for Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, well
after the doctor recommended date for travel. No room at the inn.
A birth in an unsanitary stable among strangers and foreigners,
without any family to share the moment. Then a fast run to Egypt
to avoid the murder of the newborn child, without passports or
reservations.

 

 

Do you dream of the perfect Christmas?

 

 

What makes Christmas beautiful for you?

 

Tags: perfect christmas

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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