Quite a poignant article in National Review looking at Christmas thoughts of a Christian in very different circumstances than we experience in America. The words are from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his years living as a Christian in Nazi Germany.
These words and circumstances are as far from the modern American notion of Christmas as you can get. There are no stampedes for "door buster" deals at Wal-Mart. No eggnog and fruitcake. No Christmas cards. Just a man alone with the thoughts of his incarnate Savior. The whole article is sobering and a good read, but I liked this quote the best.
Bonhoeffer’s next passage encapsulates for him the true meaning of the holiday; in it he eschews all hints of self-pity. “From the Christian point of view there is no special problem about Christmas in a prison cell. For many people in this building it will probably be a more sincere and genuine occasion than in places where nothing but the name is kept. That misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God from what they mean in the judgment of man, that God will approach where men will turn away, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn — these are things that a prisoner can understand better than other people; for him they really are glad tidings, and that faith gives him a part in the communion of saints, a Christian fellowship breaking the bounds of time and space and reducing the months of confinement here to insignificance.”
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