During a recent Christmas season, several women whom I met made almost the same remark. It was either something like this: "Christmas doesn't mean so much now that the children are grown," or like this: "Christmas is nothing without children around." An instant refusal to accept this sense of loss rose up in my thought. With it came the words of Isaiah (9:6), "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder."
Christmas is never without a child when God's child is found in our hearts. For this child, once manifested humanly as the babe born in a stable and laid in a manger, is also manifested in some degree in each one of us as we discern our sonship with God. As this eternal child is more fully understood to represent the truth of man and his relation to God as His perfect expression, our Christmas time can never lack any element of completeness.
Those who long for a child with whom to enjoy the festivities of the Christmas season sometimes see no farther than the sparkle and beauty that have their legitimate place on the human scene. But for these people, as well as for those who have families around them, this season can be the occasion for a discovery of what it means to become as a little child oneself.
