It occurred to me this morning that today was the first day of the 12 days leading to Christmas and hence would be a great day to start a ‘12 days of Christmas’ countdown.  This year I would like to share with you 12 Christmas carol lyrics that mean something to me.

I do enjoy a good Christmas carol but in years gone by I have worn out my tolerance very early in the season by playing carols on my saxophone for the Salvation Army for shifts of up to 12 hours a day with only a 15 minute break (self decision, the Salvos don’t work you that hard usually).

This year I have not done any of that intense caroling and I am actually quite happy about it and have to say I don’t miss it purely for the fact that I still have my carol tolerance intact as we enter the 12 days of Christmas.

The first lyric I would like to share is from a carol that is overflowing with inspirational lines that speak truth around the weight of Christ’s birth as a human child.  ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’

‘So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven’

Although this lyric is not the type of line that makes you drop to your knees in adoration of the King, it is the line that God layed on my heart for a large amount of the day today as I walked around home.  I haven’t been able to move past it, it just keeps repeating over and over in my mind.

Apart from the irony that God layed it upon my heart today, this simple lyric reminds me that through the love of God, who sent his Son down to earth, demoting his status from ‘God’ to ‘man’ we are saved.  His birth was so that we may physically see the ‘way, truth and life’ that we are called to live.  This gift was actually an example of devotion to God.

This sending of his Son to our ‘home’ is a precursor to the sending of his Holy Spirit to our hearts after the Son paid the price for our sins on the cross.

God first blesses us with the gift of his Son at Christmas, and then bless us again with the gift of his Holy Spirit in our hearts when we acknowledge his sacrifice on the cross in our place and then God blesses again that we may be eternally blessed to dwell with him as our Father in Heaven.

At Christmas, God imparts to us the blessings of heaven, while we are still on earth by giving us the first installment of his ‘Trinity of Gifts’ through the gift of his Son Jesus in human form.

May God impart to your heart the love that he gave through Jesus.

Merry Christmas.