"Mary was a little girl who was asked to run an errand for he mother shortly before supper. She dashed away to the store to get a loaf of bread. But supper was on the table and the family all gathered and still no Mary. Finally, she came skipping in with the loaf of bread. Her mother scolded her for fooling around on the way home. Mary said she had seen Susan and Susan's doll just broke. Her mother asked "Did you help Susan fix her doll?"

"No", Mary said, "I helped her cry!!!"

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.I received a Christmas card many years ago, which I shall never forget. On the front of the card was a stable with Baby Jesus lying in a manger. Above you could see the beams of the manger and ever so lightly they were casting a shadow on the Baby in the form of a cross. The inside of the card said, "The wood of the manger, became the tree of the cross." Isn't that true?

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Joseph had a problem. His fiance, Mary, was pregnant, and everyone knew it.
You know what small towns are like. There are no secrets. Maybe Mary said
something to a friend, or someone noticed that her monthly time hadn't come
. . . Well, there are all sorts of ways that word gets out. Mary was
preggers, as they say, sniggering on street corners, and -- and here was
Joseph's dilemma -- and Joseph wasn't the father. If the local gossips knew
who the real father was, they weren't saying. They and Joseph alike knew for
a fact that it wasn't Joseph.

What to do? What to do? Joseph and Mary were betrothed, engaged, almost
married. Back in those days, betrothal wasn't something one fooled around
with. Betrothal was tantamount to marriage itself. If you cheated on your
betrothed, you were committing adultery. And there was only one way out of
the betrothal -- divorce. Joseph's course was clear. There was only one
thing for him to do. Mary had cheated on him. He could never complete the
marriage now. They had to get a divorce.

The course may have been clear, but it wasn't easy. Joseph loved Mary. He
respected her faithfulness, her intelligence, her daring spirit. If it were
up to him, hurt as he was, he might even be willing to forgive her. After
all, if she promised she would never did anything like that again . . . She
was young, only twelve or thirteen. She'd learn. Shouldn't she be given a
chance?

But on the other hand, Joseph was a righteous, decent, law-abiding man.
Adultery was not something one could just dismiss. It was a sin against the
family, the spiritual and economic basis of society. And adultery was such a
huge sin, such an unforgivable sin, that the Bible itself said it should be
punished by stoning the sinner to death. If Joseph forgave Mary, wouldn't
that be like condoning the sin? Wouldn't it undermine society to be soft on
adultery? Everyone would know that Joseph wasn't the father. No one would
ever trust him to honor and uphold the law in a tough situation again.

"Well," Joseph said to himself, "as they say in synagogue, 'Hate the sin,
love the sinner.' I can't go ahead and marry Mary after all this. But I can'
t stand to see her killed, either. I know. I'll put her away quietly. She'll
go off somewhere, have the baby in private, spend the rest of her life
living unmarried with distant relatives. It's a pretty grim future for her,
but at least it's better than death by stoning. And the law does give me
that much wiggle room."

Joseph sighed. He'd found a solution. It wasn't a great solution. It wasn't
even a good solution. Joseph still loved Mary and wished he could brush it
all aside. But that would undermine morality, and he couldn't do that
either. Oh . . . Dang! It was a solution. He'd do it. And so Joseph went to
bed that night, with his decision made and his stomach still in knots. It
probably took than the usual amount of time for him to fall asleep.

That night, in the midst of Joseph's fitful dreams, a miracle occurred. An
angel appeared to Joseph and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid
to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy
Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save
his people from their sins." That's it! Problem over! Since Mary was
pregnant by the Holy Spirit, she hadn't committed adultery after all! Joseph
could forgive her, which is what he wanted to do anyway, and still firmly
uphold family values! Hallelujah! Sure -- there was still the problem of
what people would think, but you can't have everything. And so Joseph took
Mary as his wife, named the child Jesus, and the rest is history. End of
story.

from a sermon by
Barbara Bundick

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The Real Picture

During the long war years a boy looked frequently at a picture of his daddy on the table. He had left when the boy was a young infant. After several years the boy had forgotten him as a person but he would often look at the picture and say, "If only my father could step out of that picture and be real...."
Christmas means that in a sad day of sin when man had almost forgotten God, He stepped into the world in the form of His Son.

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My favorite Christmas pageant story is presented by Charlie Schultz in comic strip, Peanuts. Linus has been assigned the part of narrator. He must open the performance with the retelling of the angel's appearance to Mary announcing that she has been honored to bear the Christ child. However, Linus has in past years struggled with a bad case of stage fright, so he works hard to memorize his lines. In the days leading up to the performance he has rehearsed and re-rehearsed his lines. His has ingrained them into his memory. By the day of the performance, he can recite them flawlessly. But when that moment arrives for him to announce, 

And the angel came in unto her and said, "Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women.

Fear not, Mary for thou hast found favor with God and behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS
He froze with fear. He began to quiver before the congregation. In desperation, he tries to remember his line but all he could do is raise his hand and say 

Zap, your pregnant

from
Reverend John H. Pavelko
Crossroads Presbyterian Church
1445 Welch Rd
Walled Lake MI 48390