This will be our last newsletter for this calendar year. Last year, we made the decision to skip the newsletter during Christmas week. We decided that would be a good plan again this year.

Ann and I chose not to write a season article. We will continue with the same theme we've carried on the last few weeks. Mikal asked if we might repeat her thoughts about family life and the season that she first wrote in our newsletter back in 1996. We are happy to do so.

Over the years, the Christmas season has been an enormously meaningful occasion for us. Like most others in the Christian world, we honor our Savior at this time of year. Yes, we wish that everyone would honor Jesus all the year around the way people do in December. However, we recognize the fact that we don't live in a world of wishes. We take advantage of the season. Attacks on the Christian faith seem subdued at this season of the year and timid believers temporarily come out of their shell. We think that's good.

Most of our memories of Christmas have something to do with family. To us the family bond is more important than the gifts we exchange. The time shared at the dinner table is more important than the food placed on the table. We urge you to reach out to your family in whatever way you can.

We love the song "I'll Be Home for Christmas." The song was written during the bleak days of World War II, when many young men had been sent off to fight a war and couldn't be home for Christmas. Once again we are faced with a time when many families can't be together for Christmas because of the war that rages in our world. For those of you who can't be with your families at Christmas, we hope you find comfort in another lyric from the song - "if only in my dreams."

Norman and Ann

It is important to get started on building strong Christian families now. We can't wait until all the studies have been completed. We can't put off acting until data from all the studies have been compiled. We can't delay our involvement until we arrive at some delightful moment in the far distant future when all the psychologists, sociologists and preachers agree on how best to conduct family life.

There will always be new things to learn. It seems like every time we learn something new about the subject of child rearing, mentally kick ourselves and say, "We wish we had known that when we were raising our children." We live family life in the present tense. You have to deal with marriage conflict today. You have to deal with your child's behavior problem before bedtime. We don't have time to become wiser, sharper, better informed before we make a lot of family decisions. What can we do?

• We start by doing what we have always done. Open up the Word of God and ask the same question the ancient people asked of the prophets. "Is there any Word from the Lord?" That means we stand up for the family as the fundamental building block of society. We affirm that God knew what he was doing when he said, in Genesis 2:24 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." We also understand that you don't tinker with that arrangement without severe consequences. Jesus meant what he said in Matthew 19:6 "Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." It also means that we proclaim the principles of honor in the home - husbands and wives honoring each other; parents honoring children; children honoring their parents.

• The church needs to be in the business of equipping families. In Ephesians 4, Paul said that the appointed leaders in the church are supposed to make it their business to "prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ might be built up." Are the needs of the family left out of that preparation process? How could they be? If church leaders aren't to be concerned about families then why did Paul say in 1 Timothy 3:4 that an elder must ". . . manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect?" We're going to have to be more creative than we've ever been.

• We can talk about the negatives of women working outside the home until we've run out of words. But women are still going to be working and if all the church can do is put another guilt trip on the mother, who already feels guilty, then we aren't helping very much.

We need to offer help to Christian women who are trying to find a balance between job and family. Maybe we need to help those women with some of their domestic responsibilities instead of pointing a finger and saying, "If you were a good mother, you'd stay at home with your children."

But what can we do for those whose lives have already been scarred by family failure? That will be the subject of our last installment.

"The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that Saint Nicholas soon would be there." Not only do we expect that Saint Nick will make his long-awaited visit, but the dinner will satisfy the hardest to please, Uncle Charles will have metamorphosed from the critical Scrooge to a caring and devoted benefactor, Aunt Lilly and Uncle Joe will not continue their annual resurrection of the hatchet, and hope for the rebirth of the family spirit reigns.

In Celia Falicov's Family Transitions, Christmas and its anticipation are referred to as a psychological pregnancy, which begins in October when we are warned there are only 90 shopping days left. The authors say, "The nest is symbolically refeathered and special food prepared for the arrival of the new symbolic baby," the long awaited expectation of family completing itself, -- wholly protecting, loving, and nurturing.

Other comments in Falicov's book remind the reader that joy does occur on the festive occasion, yet tinged with an edge of sadness, or "a feeling of something lost or missed." The authors call it a "desperate feeling that there may not be enough new hope." Somehow we may leave the gathering, still empty, our expectations unrealized. These writers conclude, "And always, at the end there is the loneliness. The warmth of renewed closeness is replaced by the pain of distance or indifference."

What these authors describe smacks of the pain that we each experience everyday. Christian counselor Larry Crabb says we were all created to live in a perfect world with perfect relationships with the Father and perfect relationships with one another. But that reality was lost in the garden. It will never exist here, not even on a snow- blanketed day in December.

When I sense people looking for that wholeness, I am reminded of John 7 when the Jews were celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles. There with Jesus in their midst they were aching for the same balm for their hearts. Historians tell us that an uncommanded ceremony had become customary on the last day of the Feast. The priest would take a golden vial and fill it with water from the fount of Siloam. With much celebration the vial was carried through the gate of the temple and the water mixed with wine and then poured on the sacrifice on the altar. It is believed that this custom began from an improper understanding of Isaiah 12:3, "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation." The originators of the ritual were searching for that promised wholeness.

Jesus proclaims to the people that He is the only answer for their thirst and ours. And then He promises the Comforter, our complete source of protection, nurture, and care. And if we will allow Him, we can have a holiday of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control," Galatians 5:22.

I suggest that we approach the holiday with the perspective of Luke 6, giving love, giving encouragement, not looking for anything in return. Then we will be "sons of the Most High." When we are filled with the Spirit, He enables us to do just that. If we are filled with Him, what emptiness could there be? Again we are reminded that nothing of this world can truly satisfy. If we will remember to look to the cross, remembering that everyone around that holiday feast can be made whole at the cross, then as our hearts overflow with gratitude, we will experience His unspeakable joy.

The late Lanny Henniger had a knack for thinking "out-of-the-box." People tend to choose sides over Christmas. Some consider it the most holy season of the year, but you would be hard pressed to find Biblical sanction for that conclusion. Others almost treat Christmas as if it were some kind of evil. Lanny had his head on straight. By thinking "out-of-the-box" Lanny helped his readers keep Christmas in perspective. We are happy to reproduce his thoughts