What Gifts Does the Christ Child Bring
By Joan Uda
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About this ebook
These twenty-three stories combine the joyous, hopeful, inspirational parts of Advent and Christmas with life's inevitable pain, grief and just plain everydayness. Some are funny, and all explore the deep meanings and spiritual loveliness of this most inspirational season. Joan Uda writes to show how our own lives and celebrations are illuminated by the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Joan Uda
Joan Uda is a retired United Methodist Minister. She began her professional life as a teacher, then became an attorney, and at last answered her childhood call to ministry. She writes a weekly column, preaches, teaches and conducts workshops. She lives in Montana with her husband Lowell. They have four children and five grandchildren.
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What Gifts Does the Christ Child Bring - Joan Uda
What Gifts Does the Christ Child Bring?
By Joan Uda
Published by Rice Universe Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Joan Uda
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Edited by Lowell Uda
RICE UNIVERSE PUBLISHING
P.O. Box 7505
Helena, MT 59604
http://www.riceuniversepublishing.com
Table of Contents
Rejoice, It’s Advent
Advent, the Season of Hope
Attending Christmas
John the Baptist: Preparing Advent’s Way
The Far Place of Adoption
Summoning Advent
Shop ‘til You…What?
Journey to Bethlehem
Christ in Christmas Boxes
I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light
All-Day Sucker
Silence in the Heart of Christmas
Can You Hear the Christmas Lights Singing?
What Gifts Does the Christ Child Bring?
Abundant Christmas Blessings
Caroling in the Heart and Soul of Christmas
Holy Infant Sweet and Mild
Baby Blue Star
The Day the Christmas Tree Crashed
Home for Christmas
From a Christmas Past
A Very Merry Christmas Day
Christmas Angels
Brief Bio of the Author
Books by Joan Uda
Praise for Joan Uda's At the Water's Edge Vol. I
And for At the Water's Edge Vol. II
Other Readers Say
Rejoice, It’s Advent
Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent, and there is something in me -- something wild, from the north country, all frozen ground and biting wind -- that loves how dusk falls early now, in golds, pinks and purples over our valley. It falls over our garden too, over the autumn beauty of the pines and spruce, the bare-limbed snow crabs and apricot trees, the red and yellow-stemmed dogwood. Even the asters and mums have given up their vibrant colors and turned brown, going underground to rest and recuperate until next spring. The air crackles with cold and snow appears on our mountains.
From my study window I see the lights of town in the distance and I’m drawn to them. When I retired from ministry in Colorado and returned here to Montana, my husband Lowell still had eight more months to pastor his church there. My first Advent back home I was alone, and I’d sit watching how night slipped down and veiled the landscape. I was joyful at being here, yet teary at the long wait until my sweetheart of four decades could join me.
Advent is like that for me, a time of light and dark, joy and waiting. Like most of us, I revel in Christmas preparations, putting up the tree, watching lights appear in neighborhoods and wondering if they’ll be as beautiful this year as last.
The light is special because right around Christmas is the darkest part of the year, with the shortest days. I think it’s no accident that many cultures celebrate with light during this dark season.
For Christians, our celebration is the birth of Jesus, who is our way, truth, light.
Jesus came to walk with us on earth and show us how God calls us to treat each other. I want to walk as a child of the light,
we sing.