Published: December 13, 2007 12:55 pm         

Celebrate reason for the season

The digital camera craze is in full swing. The latest generation of picture takers rarely uses film anymore. Instead, pictures are saved onto a computer memory card and then retrieved and printed via computer printers or placed on to a compact disk to watch on TV. There are even digital picture frames you can buy that display hundreds of your favorites pictures in a steady slide show.

When my wife and I were married in 1980, we took about four rolls of film on our honeymoon and came home with 75 or a hundred pictures to remember that special trip. People now take a hundred pictures when they go to the dentist. I recently took more than 300 pictures on a vacation and some friends took 800! Since there is no real cost in developing film if you don't want to, we feel free to keep on snapping. I suppose someday we'll just wear a "head-cam" all the time and video tape our whole lives to review at some later date (although that would mean that at some point we would be recording ourselves watching ourselves on video, which sounds kind of boring.)

I suppose the idea of capturing moments in time is as appealing to all of us as it was to God. In the gospel of Luke, God's own memory card, a moment in time is held there for us to gaze upon. It is the account of the birth of Jesus Christ. It is a snapshot of God's great plan to offer mankind eternal life and forgiveness of sin. Because the birth occurred at night, God's flash was in the form of a star shining brightly. His auto-focus lets there be no doubt as to the reason for the season. The focal point of this picture is the child in the manger.

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ and the image of that night remains for all to see. Celebrate the reason for the season at one of the many special Christmas services in our area churches this December.

David Sandvick is the pastor of First English Baptist Church in Frostburg.