Dear family and friends,

Recently, I was at the Alliance Redwoods Camp in Occidental, California, to lead a men’s retreat. I was asked to speak at one session outdoors on the topic of Sabbath, while the next session was to take place indoors and be about trees.

As I stood under a canopy of towering redwoods, I related a story. When our children were in high school, there was a church in town that had a singular window. It is purported to be the largest flat panel Tiffany window in the world. The subject of the window is the shepherds in the hills above Bethlehem. Whether it is lit from the sun in the day, or by floodlights at night, the window is spectacular. 

One Christmas Eve, our family visited that church. I wanted to hear how the pastor would preach on the birth of Christ with this stunning window shining down on us. Alas, he never glanced at the window, or even mentioned it.

The lesson I learned that Christmas is that God is often giving us gifts—yet much of the time, we don’t see these presents, much less open them. After sharing the Tiffany window story with my hosts in California, I asked if we could swap the sessions so I could teach about trees in the Bible while sitting under the redwoods, and then talk about Sabbath while indoors. What a joy to speak about Christ, the Tree of Life, among these giants of the tree kingdom—which can live for thousands of years. It went beautifully.

In a similar vein, I can’t think of a better time to talk about Jesus than on his birthday. How does one do this?