This post was originally published on aHolyExperience.com. To find out more about Ann’s new book written and designed for a family to anticipate Jesus at Christmas time, follow the link and get your copy of Uwrapping the Greatest Gift.

So right after everybody tosses their fabric-glued toga costumes and the glimmer-shedding masks?

Yeah, that’s when things start getting real.

When the day right after all the Halloween candy’s temptingly slashed to what should be an illegal half-price, and parents universally start enforcing just an innocent little chocolate tax?

And those flyers start showing up jingling their not-so-subtle bells —

like mill stones somebody out there wants to fling around your tired neck.

Yeah, watching our tribe of kids bent over the pile of flyers that show up here come the first of November? I’m thinking the apples don’t get whipped in the wind far from that proverbial tree.

Yeah, you better believe it, that was me — the kid drooling over the glossy Sear’s catalogue Wish Book by November 1st already.

Eyes rounding big as saucers that could hold, oh —  a veritable teeming sea of things that you could order over the phone and have the rural mailman deliver even without any shiny sled.

When the two page glossy spread opened in 1987 to that pink ROOTS sweatshirt? Yeah — they don’t call them sweatshirts for nothing, making kids’ hands all sweaty just for that cool factor.

You’d think ripping through that Wish Book catalogue you’d find it on some page, maybe right at the forgotten back?

“How to order The Real Joy
Awe and Wonder Right Here — One Size Fits All The Willing
Order Your Reason to Rejoice & Love Christmas like a Kid Again — Free Right-Now Shipping
Brand New Attitude that Eradicates Selfishness, Me-ism, and Materialism this holiday“

No Dice.

Not finding that page in any catalogue. Apple’s not making any flashy announcement: ‘The New Iheart  — it’s time to update your life now.’

Apple’s not making any flashy announcement: ‘The New Iheart  — it’s time to update your life now.’

Yeah, our man-boy, Levi, he’s hunched over the day’s flyers all flashing with blinking and battery buzzing, new plasticy things and just before I can say anything — there’s a word inked across the newsprint that you don’t see most other times of the year —

Miracle.

You bet, sign us up for that, please and thank you, ma’am.

Sign us up for a season of miracles. A miracle right here for one messy, weary mother and a whole bunch of wound-up, messy kids — because the season is going to go down one way or another, and look here, Self —-

What kind of memories do we really want to have, do you want the kids to have, because that’s what the kids are going to carry out of the front door here in 10 years, and not likely anything that required assembly or 3 double A batteries? Nothing wrong with gifts — just where are we going to put the emphasis?

Levi sprawls another one of the flyers across the counter — and c’mon, Adult Self — get intentional about how this will go down — how you live all these seasons are adding up to your life.

Unless you’re intentional about the holidays — they will leave you in a painful daze.

“Hey Kai?”  Levi’s circling it in the flyer, “You need another sensor for that little truck your building? They got them for sale at the hobby shop — ”

Watching the kid circling up the flyer, it get’s pretty clear: What the kids want is to be surprised — because part of the delight of a gift is the unexpected of the gift. You get a gift beyond your expectations when it surprises your expectations. 



And the thing is: Sometimes the gift you’d never choose is exactly the gift you need most. Sometimes the best gift, is the gift you’d never pick.

Thing is? Jesus is the most surprising gift — because He’s the gift that we didn’t know that we needed most.

Jesus isn’t really on the world’s Christmas list, because the world really wants something that will make a difference externally, because the world thinks our greatest challenges are around us —

But Jesus wants to give us Someone, to make a difference internally, because our greatest challenges are in us, because He’s the only One who can change everything eternally.

We want things that we think can literally change our world — God wants to literally change us.
We want things we can touch — God wants us to touch Him.
We want things around us to make us feel good — God wants in us, to make us good.

Sometimes the best gift doesn’t impress people — but it presses us into God.
Sometimes the best gift doesn’t impress people — but it presses us into God.

Yeah, it can happen – Jesus doesn’t really factor onto the world’s Christmas list because the world doesn’t think Jesus really has enough Wow Factor.

But Kid — Who made your joy sensors?
Your Joy Sensors were made for Jesus.
Your Maker made your joy sensors to enjoy Him.

You aren’t ever missing out on anything, if you aren’t letting anything make you miss out on Him.

That’s why He came — for you to revel, marvel, delight, adore, enjoy Him. And Jesus didn’t just come down to you — He came as a gift for you.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son …”

Nothing else in your life is a given — but Jesus is the only given:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given…”

If Jesus had just come down to you  — Christianity might be a conditional faith. But that He is gift to you, Christianity is a gift faith.
If Jesus had just come down to you  — Christianity might be a conditional faith. But that He is gift to you, Christianity is a gift faith.

If you worked your tail off for a month to earn a living and when you were paid, it said across the check: “Here’s your gift in full,” you’d feel mocked and belittled.

But when Jesus comes and the angels sing across the sky, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given,” we don’t feel mocked and belittled, we feel merry and bright — because we know at a cellular level that all is grace.

That Christianity and Christmas isn’t something that we earn, but that we are given, that all is grace. At a cellular level we know that Christmas isn’t about the nice getting gifts and the naughty getting nothing; it’s about all the world getting offered grace.

What if there was soul-harm in telling anybody that you only get gifts if you’re good enough —

and what if we were giving our kids a lifelong gift if they knew there’s always grace if they want it because God’s love is always enough?

I don’t know — maybe too long we’ve given the kids this message that the nice get gifts and the naughty get nothing, this sugar daddy message that they have to be good enough to get gifts.

Sugar Daddy Christmases are about getting stuff that you’ve earned for being good.
Savior Christmases are about being given good grace just for being.

God does give the Wow Factor at Christmas — because God gives God. God gives The One Gift that can’t be exceeded — He gave the One Gift that He Himself can’t even exceed. Think about that for a minute…. for a lifetime.

He gives you the One gift, the only Gift, that came from inside of Himself, to change the inside of us. He gave us the One thing that can never be topped — to rescue us who feel like a mess at the bottom.

So look, Amazing Kid with the Flyer — you and I and us, we gotta get Christmas turned around because the thing is: Christmas is the fount of every other blessing. “From the fullness of His grace —  we have all received one blessing after another.” John 1:14-16

“If Christmas is true, then miracles could be flowing into our lives constantly…
 If you believe this miracle of Christmas, if you base your life on it, there is no end to the miracles that can come into your life.” [Tim Keller]

Believe the miracle of Christmas —- and not be pressured into the materialism of Christmas

Believe the miracle of Christmas —- and not be pressured into the materialism of Christmas
 — because “if you believe this miracle of Christmas, if you base your life on it, there is no end to the miracles that can come into your life.”

A Christ-centered Christmas is the one wellspring that you can’t cap.

A Christ-centered Christmas is the gift that flows all year, that gives you all your other gifts, even in the middle of the driest, hardest places in the middle of July.

The miracle of Christmas is that we not only get someOne to face the challenges around us, we get someOne to face the challenges in us. We get to face Someone. We get to not ever, ever be alone.

Now, that’s a miracle that’s worth intentionally unwrapping this Christmas.

Yeah, you see it happening, how everybody’s done and have decided they don’t want Christmas by the flyers, by the stores, by the calendar — because what our hearts really want is a Christmas by the Book.

What our hearts really want is a Christmas by the Book.

By the Good Book, the Timeless Book, the Priceless Book, His Book— by the stories of the Book that will be here long after all the batteries die on everything else.

Boy, forget putting all the emphasis on the toys this year that are new and improved — maybe we all want the emphasis on something that’s Time Tested & Already Proven to Be The Best.

I’ve just put my hand on Levi’s shoulder — when Shalom hurtles in beside me like a soul seeking a cleft somewhere, anywhere, in the world, somewhere to crawl into and hide out of the storm.

“I called Malakai a pig.” Yeah, great. That would be us.  “And I told him I didn’t love him anymore.”

She says it like a journalist stating a fact — tinged with oh, a wee accent of confession. And then her  dam lets go, and she’s a storm of regret shuddering up against me: “And now he won’t speak to me and I don’t care, but I sorta do, and why do I get angry like that, and how does God love us when we don’t even like ourselves anymore or anyone else?”

Yeah, girl — yeah, that question that gets down into our bones: how to believe that God could really love you?

And I whisper into her hair, “…. ‘member that time that my childhood pen pal sent me that quilt, with the thousands and thousands of stitches?”

“Yeah —“ She nestles her head further into me, “that Christmas quilt?”

“Yes, that Christmas quilt with all that gold thread — and remember how I asked, ‘But how do we know each other well enough for a gift like this? Why such an expensive gift? A gift that cost so much —-  so much time, so much of herself?”

“Remember what Heike said when I asked her? “I love you —- and you mean more to me than you know.”

It happens a hundred times a day — Your soul feels like a bruised sore — and how can you believe that He loves you?

And what does God give you?

Shalom whispers it: “Jesus”

Christmas means God crawled through the cracks of a broken world and right into our broken hearts. He pulled on skin so we could touch and hold Him and be held. Behold Him & be held. Anything is possible now.

Anyone can be impossibly loved now.

Because look at the expense of that Gift — what could cost more than His Gift? Every time you don’t believe that you mean that much to Him? Whisper, “Jesus. Jesus.”

Because I love you —- you mean more to Me than you know.

You. mean. more. to. Me. than. you. know.

It’s only if our Christmas has true meaning, that our faith has true meaning — that we know our real meaning.

The real meaning of Christmas – solves the problem of meaning.
The real meaning of Christmas — is that we’re meant for Him —- and we mean more to Him than we know.

The real meaning of Christmas — is that we’re meant for Him —- and we mean more to Him than we know.

When I hug the kid circling stuff in the flyer — I’m grinning a mile wide, dreaming how we could get the miracle this year, we could have The Greatest Christmas — the Christmas we always dreamed of …

It’s always worth it to give the greatest gift: Jesus.

Mother’s Day is approaching. Maybe you know this because of all of the TV ads telling you to hurry up and buy your mom a gift. Ann Voskamp shares with us an idea for a gift that’s better than anything you can buy.

She keeps it by her Bible. Clay shaped by hands, a pottery jar, there on the kitchen table, always there by her Bible, both open for the taking. I don’t ask her about it.

At the end of a phone call, late spring, leaves unfurling, Mama brings it up. “Ann … the jar.”

I pause at the sink, pause in the scouring, the scrubbing it all away. “Yes, Mama?”

I gave her the jar, thrift-store find, for Mother’s Day last year, filled it with slips of paper.

“I just wanted you to know what it’s meant to me. I pick out one every day … sometimes more.”

The Manitoba maple outside my window glints with coming green, and I watch the light ponding across the floor, smile for Mama gathering … “Things in that jar I never would have remembered … things I didn’t know you remembered.”

There were Jesus’ words read on Sunday, the living it out during the week now: Give thanks anyways—do this in re-membrance of Me.

God says to give thanks, to do this in remembrance of Him—because in the remembering to give thanks, it’s our broken places that are re-membered— and we are the ones made whole.

A joyful heart is good medicine and our broken bones can be re-memembered when we remember to thank a good God.

Standing at the sink, watching the spring winds bring hope and life again, I remember sitting in the sun of a May day last year, writing out those slips of paper … dipping back into pool of memories and specifically winding them in and writing them down, line by line.

Thank you, Mama, for all the nights you sang me to sleep, me so scared of dark and of dying in my sleep, and you so tired. You never got frustrated with me… just kept rubbing my feet and singing … Thank you. 

Thank you, Mama, for quizzing me on all of the dates for Mr. Manoryk’s world history tests … I passed!

Thank you, Mama, for still loving me, always loving me, even when I was a saucy 12-year-old with hair-sprayed bangs who thought she knew what to wear and what to eat and where to go and was really too hard to endure …

I scratched down a sheet with spontaneous gratitude, memories I too had forgotten before pen found page. But gratitude is a magnet, attracting filings of goodness out of the expanse of the past.

I remember having written some of the memories slow … looked through the shadows of the past and remembered the good … and saw how it was happening: Authentic thanks in all things is possible because our God is a God kneading all things together into a bread that sustains. Through hard, lean years—Mama and I, we had been the busted up who had hurt each other, the unlikely still sustained. And we both had lived it, come out the other side of it.

When we stop seeing reasons to give thanks, we stop thinking there are reasons to live.

When we don’t focus on what we can thank God for, we can’t focus on living for God.

Giving thanks can help us want to take the next breath.

“When I read those slips of paper, one little thanks at a time, it’s like—a long hug from you.” Her voice is breaking up and the tender coming leaves outside the window blur a bit in wind, in me brimming. Her brimming. “It’s like the past redeemed. Thank you.”

I can hardly hear her whisper through the feeling. I can see her though, my heart can, my heart can see my mama unfolding each note. I had felt it too as I wrote each memory, line by line: A bit of gratitude for the past goes a long way to redeem the past.

The therapy is in the thanks.

Thanks therapy is God’s prescription for joy.

“Oh, but the thanks is all mine, Mama. All mine.”

Thanksgiving is always the gift back. The late spring winds blow away a bit of the cold, the warmth surely coming.

And there’s this way that one can sit silent with a mama who was brave and gave.

The mama who tried, who could use a thousand thanks for all her worn and comforting grace.

Ann Voskamp is a farmer’s wife, the home-educating mama to a half-dozen exuberant kids, and author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, a New York Times bestseller, and The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas. Named by Christianity Today as one of 50 women most shaping culture and the church today, she’s a writer for DaySpring, a speaker with Women of Faith, and a global advocate for needy children with Compassion International. Ann loses library books, usually has a sink full of soaking pots, and sees empty laundry baskets rarer than a blue moon.

To get our hearts ready for Christ’s birth, Ann Voskamp is writing for us, celebrating the holiday that’s all about Jesus. Join us as we anticipate the coming of our savior. 

That one doctor thought it was a bit of a miracle before they even cracked open the chest and cut away at his heart.

Because who in the world figures out you’ve got a tumor plugging up an entire cavernous heart chamber when you’re blithely driving kids to hockey on Tuesday night and fine-tuning a tractor engine on Thursday and sitting in the front pew on Sunday?

Maybe you only figure out your heart’s failing when you yell at the kids over state-of-disaster floors, or when you feel like a first-class Christmas failure in the age of Pinterest, or when you and yours never get through the holidays without a whole mess of family drama—and don’t ask me how I know.

Sometimes the only thing you know by heart is that your heart knows it hurts.

So when the general practitioner in the small country clinic had suspected a tumor in the Farmer brother’s heart? The specialist could only say he couldn’t really believe it, could only think of it as a bit of a miracle. People say that when miracles happen: “I can’t believe it! It’s a miracle!”

But that’s always the best place for miracles: God meets us—right where we don’t believe.

When our believing runs out, God’s loving runs on.

They roll the Farmer’s brother into the operating theater at 1:27 in the afternoon.

We can’t think. We watch the clock. The Farmer calls his dad in Florida. They pace together. My mother calls. We pray. I keep glancing up at the minute hand, the way it keeps ticking.

Ticking.

“Did I ever tell you what Max said?” Mama’s got to be eating something. I only hear her “nhuh huh.”

“Well, yeah, he clapped the Farmer’s shoulder and said he really might be the only pig farmer he’s ever met and we laughed. And at the end, he prayed over us just like you’d think Jesus would—I told the Farmer that on the way home—that it’s not very often that you meet someone and walk away thinking: “He was so much like Jesus.”

“Uh huh?” Mama’s got to be eating almonds.

“But it’s that story he told—

Can I get through this without choking up? Max’s Texan drawl was as smooth as the back of my Grandma’s Oil of Olay hand.

And he said that Taylor Storch’s family had headed to Colorado for a little skiing. That the 13-year-old had laughed loud coming down the mountain. That Taylor had fallen—crashed—down a straight rocky slant of the earth. By nightfall, she was gone, slipped off this earth and Home, and her parents, Tara and Todd, were signing papers to give away Taylor’s still-warm heart.

Mama’s quiet on the other end of the line. She’s watched them a dig a hole in the earth for her own girl.

“Max said they ended up giving Taylor’s heart to a woman in Arizona whose heart was failing so weary that she couldn’t get off the couch anymore—Patricia Winters.” There’s snow falling out the window.

There’s been ugly sin this week and there’s been dead weary and there’s been more than a few moments I haven’t known how to go on.

“Taylor’s mama had only one request.” I lean against the windowsill, head against the cool pane, tell my Mama what Max had said, how he had shown us a photo of Taylor with her mama. How Taylor’s mama had called Patricia Winters and asked her if she could come hear her heart.

“Oh my.” Mama murmurs what only a mama can feel. The clock’s ticking on the wall.

And Max had told us how Taylor’s mama flew from Dallas to Phoenix and knocked on Patricia Winters’s door and Patricia Winters walked right past the couch and she opened the door and she opened her arms and she welcomed them in. And Taylor’s mama fell into her arms and the two mothers just held each other, Taylor’s heart beating right there next to her weeping Mama’s.

And then Patricia Winters reached over and handed Taylor’s Mama a stethoscope.

And she laid that stethescope up against Patricia Winters and she could hear it, right there in Patricia as clear as a beckoning bell:

Thrum. Thrum.

Taylor’s mama could hear it loud and long, right there in her ears …

Thrum.

Like a thunder vibrating right through her—

Thrum.

Her daughter’s still-beating heart.

“Oh … I can’t …” Mama chokes out the words. “I can’t even imagine.”

Can’t imagine. Can’t believe … Miracle.

And then Max had asked us slow and quiet. “What was Taylor’s Mama really hearing?”

“It indwells a different body, but that heart is the heart of her girl … ” Max said. “And when God hears your heart, that’s what He hears—the still-beating heart of His Son.”

The clock’s ticking on the wall. Doctor’s will be cutting into the heart of the Farmer’s brother right now.

“Mama?”

“Oh—I’m here.”

Her voice’s breaking up. “Just—listening.”

Ticking. Beating.

“I was thinking this week—you know when we were in the hospital with Levi?” I turn from the window, turn the sink tap on, fill the sink as if I could fill an ache. “You know—she was the first one to come visit?”

“Yes.” Mama doesn’t have to say anything more. She knows who I mean, how it it’s been over a year and a half. That cards and letters get returned and invitations go unanswered or declined. That the strangest pain that never goes away is estrangement.

“She loved us, Mama … and I don’t know what went so impossibly wrong but I know that I miss them impossibly …”

Mama whispers it like she wishes she could make the words do more, “I know …“

The sink water’s not much better than lukewarm.

“I sure wish I knew how to fix this—I shake my head, turn the water hotter. “Because I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

In a heartbeat.

I stop. Hands in hot water.

I can hear it in me.

Thrum. Thrum.

Me with a tumor, me with heart blockage, me with a failing heart …

That’s the point: Your heart can’t forgive the tactless no-so-great Aunt, your heart can’t forgive the words that should never have been said, your heart can’t forgive the remark that was more like a blade and left a mark how many years later. Your heart can’t forgive the stepmother, the side joke, the backhand, the over-the-top family that just gets under your skin.

Your heart can’t forgive. That’s why He gave you His.

When you don’t think you can forgive what she’s said about you—

When you don’t think you can forget what he’s done to you—

When it’s His heart beating in you—you can forgive in a heartbeat.

I look up from the sink. The Christmas tree is there by the fireplace—and it’s right there, what all the hard relationships, gatherings, families need at Christmas:

The Tree is where God’s grace does heart transplants: God takes broken hearts—and gives you His.

I would tell Mama that later.

That they cut a three-inch tumor out of the Farmer’s brother’s heart. That only four days later, the Farmer drove his brother back home to his farm. That they prayed thanks for startling grace.

That it’s really true: That right where you don’t believe … is where God meets with a miracle.

That miracles happen in a heartbeat.

Ann Voskamp is a farmer’s wife, the home-educating mama to a half-dozen exuberant kids, and author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, a New York Times bestseller, and new this month, The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas. Named by Christianity Today as one of 50 women most shaping culture and the church today, she’s a writer for DaySpring, a speaker with Women of Faith, and a global advocate for needy children with Compassion International. Ann loses library books, usually has a sink full of soaking pots, and sees empty laundry baskets rarer than a blue moon.

To get our hearts ready for Christ’s birth, Ann Voskamp is writing for us, celebrating the holiday that’s all about Jesus. Join us as we anticipate the coming of our savior. 

The girl, she hands me this two-inch Christmas tree.

A Christmas tree made of salt-dough, painted and varnished.

She gives it to me right at the beginning, right when we meet.

The boughs of the tree in my palm, they are dough, cut and bent—these wee branches extended straight out.

How in the world do you make a tree like that? How long does it take to make a tree like that?

We were standing just south of Quito, Ecuador. And Lidia’s mother, she’s telling me they’ve waited 3 years for a sponsor for Lidia. And Lidia, she’s laying these Christmas ornaments right in my hand, one at a time.

It was the first week of November, last year, and it’s Ecuador and it’s stifling hot and I’m thinking more about July than Christmas.

“Lidia, she went all the way to the market for these.” Her mother tells us this in Spanish, pointing to the dough ornaments.

The mother tries to catch my eyes. She waits.

She waits until I am waiting on her next word—so she can frame just this: “She bought these for you with her own money.”

And with one line, the dough ornaments in my hand, they feel like gold. Like an incalculable sacrifice.

She’s waited three years for a sponsor? And she’s taken what money she has and bought me a two-inch Christmas tree? I scan Lidia’s face, trying to understand.

“I just don’t want you to forget.” It’s her first sentence to me. She says it in a whisper. Shy. I try to hold her gaze,

She looks away, looks down, down to the tree, fingering the branches of the tree.

“I just wanted you to remember me.”

Oh, Child.

I reach out and touch her cheek and say yes.

Yes, I will remember you.

I would fly away from her.

I would fly home in November and it would snow a bit in December and it would get cold.

We would decorate a big tree in the living room, one by the kitchen table.

We would hang Lidia’s picture off a branch. I would set out her salt-dough ornaments. I would remember her smile and how she looked down.

We would read the stories in the Old Testament of the promise of His Coming and we’d drive into town and walk through a living nativity, go to a re-enacted Bethlehem.

We would kneel at the manger.

I would kneel there and wonder at this God.

This God who shows up in the stench of a barn.

If God avoided red carpets and opted instead to enter the black stable, is there anywhere the hallowed presence of God won’t appear?

If the blinding holiness of God breaks into this world with the cry of a child wrapped in filthy cloths, lying in a dung heap—then couldn’t God reveal Himself anywhere?

If we can’t ever fly from God, if God could show up anywhere—then when it’s exactly most unlikely for Him to come to us—it is most like Him to come to us right then.

I would kneel at the manger and it’d be so clear, right there in that scandalously helpless babe: God steps before us—in ways we can step away from Him.

It’s possible: You can abandon a baby on some backstreet behind a mall, Christmas shoppers passing by oblivious.

You can nail God up to some tree. You can inadvertently turn your back on the beggar and the holy and God right before you decorate with the ivy and the holly and I know.

And I’d kneel there at the reenacted Bethlehem and finger along it on the wooden grain of a manger trough—The God who needs nothing, came needy. The God who came to give us mercy, was at our mercy. And He who entered into our world, He lets us say it in a thousand ways– that there is no room at the inn.

God steps directly before us in the needs we can indirectly neglect.

He steps before us in the desperate child waiting for a hand, in the misfit down the street we don’t have to invite to dinner, in the relative that’s but a loud talking, dressed up broken beggar sitting at the end of the table.

God meets us not so much in the lovely—but in the unlikely.

I would be kneeling there at the manger, thinking of our God curled like a pod between trough planks, our God who paid with Himself, incalculable sacrifice, to lay down on the bark of a tree just to pull us close.

And I would remember Lidia standing there offering me her tree, that angel.

And when we’d walk out of the living nativity, walk away from the baby lying there, walk across the parking lot looking for our vehicle to drive home to our warmth and the music playing low and the lights of our tree—

I’d almost be this moan on the wind:

“I just wanted you to remember me … ”

Oh Child.

Oh, Christ Child.

And we go home from the manger to our tree, the scent of God still on us.

And I’d stand in front of our six-foot-tree and see Lidia’s photo hanging there and that salt dough angel Lidia had handed me, wings reaching out to hold a star—

We are born in time, still, to embrace the Christ Child, we can hold Christ now in every hurting person we hold.

Did I give You food when You were hungry?

Did I give You water when You were thirsty?

Did I remember You at all this Christmas, Child who bore the Tree?

And on a spinning orb of Christmas Trees, our hearts can pound yes—our limbs and light and love reaching straight out …

It’d be insane to think it unless Christ Himself said it:

“‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for Me.’” —Matthew 25:37-39

Ann Voskamp is a farmer’s wife, the home-educating mama to a half-dozen exuberant kids, and author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, a New York Times bestseller, and new this month, The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas. Named by Christianity Today as one of 50 women most shaping culture and the church today, she’s a writer for DaySpring, a speaker with Women of Faith, and a global advocate for needy children with Compassion International. Ann loses library books, usually has a sink full of soaking pots, and sees empty laundry baskets rarer than a blue moon.

In his word, God has written an epic pageantry of mankind, from Adam to the Messiah, the root of Jesse. Reaching back into the pages of the Old Testament, author Ann Voskamp explores the lineage of Jesus in her new book, The Greatest Gift, through the majestic advent tradition of the Jesse Tree .

Ann’s book features a reading for each day of advent that points to the coming promise of Christ, as well as an exquisite ornament highlighting the Biblical story.

Just for Haven, Ann demonstrates in a video how you can share the gospel with your family by using a Jesse Tree. (If video does not display correctly, click here). Pick up your own copy of the The Greatest Gift, and you will also get a code for the same artwork inside her book, the ornaments for your own Jesse Tree.

(The Christmas music used in this video is from Bill Cantos’ album Joy – A Solo Piano Christmas.)

To get our hearts ready for Christ’s birth, Ann Voskamp is writing for us, celebrating the holiday that’s all about Jesus. Join us as we anticipate the coming of our savior. 

Whenever Christmas begins to burden,

it’s a sign that I’ve taken on something of the world and not of Christ.

The Farmer, he brings home these four miniature candles with the groceries and he pecks me on the cheek. Crazy, how wonders never cease!

So I set out just these four candles—one by the sink, one atop the cabinet, one by the hearth, the last at the window.

And from the sink, I can see each of the four flames bold, oil lamps keeping watch.

Four flickering wicks—they’re like these lamps keeping vigil for the Babe coming under a star.

I stand there with a grocery bag and one question: Why do I usually let the oil go out?

Why fume about the kid’s Latin CDs left naked and ashamed in the study, throw up my hands when the boys rub each other wrong, and I’m no Aaron or Hur, and it’s my heart that grows heavy, and I fall all the time and it needs to be falling in prayer,and why can’t I keep watch even one hour? Why rate Christmas on cookies and worth on works and presents on perfection?

Who keeps the vigil this Advent and why am I not the virgin with the lamp, just vigilant just for Christ?

It comes, like a lighting:

Christmas cannot be bought. Christmas cannot be created.
Christmas cannot be made by hand. Christmas can only be found—

In the creche, in the cradling trough, in the mire and the stench and the unexpected and unlikely and only in the person of Christ.

And I breathe.

Exhale.

Living slow is the way to carry an extra flask of oil joy and living life slow is a way to see.

And the slower I take the last days of Advent, the more places I find Christ and Christmas and the Light that warms.

The shadows lengthen.

The kids whine.

The soup burns.

The packaging and the twine and the paper and the cookies and the cards explode across the house.

And four brazen flames burn, ready … waiting … watching.

And it’s like a kindling—

What if I laid down efforts and expectations, perfectionism and performance … and simply waited with arms and heart and eyes wide open?

Christ the Babe comes in Christmas just as Christ the Savior comes on the Cross—seeking only our embrace.

And the only thing really to wrap? Is the heart around around Him.

The Farmer, he heads out for evening barn chores. A

nd I stand in the mess and watch from the window. He turns and winks.

And I smile and wave, a burning heart in the midst—

and wait for his coming again, the paned glass reflecting wicks keeping bright vigil, extra oil of joy still left out for the love that comes down.

Love that comes down and simple says come rest.

Ann Voskamp is a farmer’s wife, the home-educating mama to a half-dozen exuberant kids, and author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, a New York Times bestseller, and new this month, The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas. Named by Christianity Today as one of 50 women most shaping culture and the church today, she’s a writer for DaySpring, a speaker with Women of Faith, and a global advocate for needy children with Compassion International. Ann loses library books, usually has a sink full of soaking pots, and sees empty laundry baskets rarer than a blue moon.

Santa pictures, stockings, wish lists, and a morning full of gifts. How do you keep Jesus at the center of Christmas for you and your children when everything around you beckons with glitter and flash to get you to want more, spend more, do more?

Wise parents have many strategies: pastor John Piper’s wife Noël created the Noël Calendar for her kids, an advent calendar that tells the Christmas story step by step each day. Wise children also have strategies: One of author Ann Voskamp’s sons asked her what gifts Jesus gets on Christmas one year so the family started a tradition of picking out gifts for Jesus, such as seeds for orphans or mosquito nets for those in malarial countries.

All of the best strategies center around the main one that God has given us to learn and remember who he is and what he has done: storytelling. In his Word, God has told us the most amazing story of his son, coming to earth as a baby, to be a savior for sinners like us, who can’t stop doing bad things—and who can’t even do the good things that we want to do. It sounds absurd, but that’s precisely what makes it so wonderful.

Because he was born in a manger, grew up, became a man, died, and then went to heaven, we can be forgiven for the bad things we do and given the strength to do good things for God’s glory. And we can also follow him to heaven one day. But it all started with a newborn in a manger.

Since Christmas is centered around a child, sometimes it is best to see Christmas like a child to appreciate the mystery and wonder anew. Children’s author Sally Lloyd–Jones writes in her new book of stories for children, Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing:

The God who flung planets into space and kept them whirling around and around. The God who made the universe with just a word. The one who could do anything at all was making himself small and coming down as a baby. Wait, God was sending a baby to rescue the world?

“But it’s too wonderful”, Mary said, and felt her heart beating hard. “How can it be true?”
“Is anything too wonderful for God,” Gabriel asked?

So Mary trusted God with more than her eyes could see and she believed. I am God’s servant she said, whatever God says, I will do.

By seeing the Christmas story in a fresh way, we can then go back to the Word and see it anew as well, as a story that God wrote for us:

But the angel said to them: Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. (Luke 2:10-12)

Who did Jesus come for, when he came to lie in a manger? He came for you.

Lindsey M. Roberts spent years writing exclusively for secular journalism, including such outlets as The Washington Post, Architect, and Gray magazine, before she first tried to write about Jesus. She’s thrilled to explore in words how everything from cleaning the kitchen three times a day to delighting in the maritime history of Nantucket is an opportunity to meet and glorify God. Lindsey lives with her husband, a pastor and U.S. Army Reserve chaplain, and two children in Wisconsin.