The Wonder of Christmas
Do you see the words above? Read through the list to see what they are? No, I mean read them NOW! 
Did you see it? Each of these words are used so often in our modern speech that they have lost their impact. When nearly everything is “amazing” or “wonderful” what sets anything apart as truly amazing?
When you read the Christmas story for the first time you are amazed at it. You cannot grasp how God became man and came as a little Baby in “the little town of Bethlehem.” You are astonished by the love of God that He would send His Son to be the Redeemer of a lost, sinful human race. You wonder about it.
Christmas 1933 saw the introduction of a “new” Christmas carol. I put new in quotation marks because the song wasn’t new. It was a folk song well known in the hills of the Appalachia Mountains. A songwriter b y the name of John Jacob Niles was traveling in the Appalachia mountains when he heard a little girl sing a few lines of this song. He went home and put the words to a haunting melody and the song became an instant classic. Here are the words to the first verse.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
Do you still wonder about Christmas? Or, has it become just “old hat”? This Sunday we will look at how some of the characters in the account of Christmas reacted to the news of the birth of the Baby Jesus.
Let’s add wonder back to Christmas and again be amazed at the story.
