For many people Christmas is filled with dread instead of delight. <\/p>\n
Author Jon Walker writes this: \u2018I\u2019m sitting in a fast-food restaurant observing a young girl celebrating an early Christmas with her mother. Her presents are spread out across the booth and she just said, \u201cI miss you, Mommy.\u201d \u201cI miss you too, Baby,\u201d her mother says. Beyond the booth\u2026 a woman casually, but carefully watches them. Using my journalist\u2019s eye, I put it all together. The watching woman is a social worker supervising a structured visit for a mother and child who are doing their best to celebrate Christmas\u2026 a few minutes later foster parents arrive and take the little girl home. The mother leaves alone. There\u2019s a darker side to Christmas we rarely acknowledge. We create this fantasy that seldom matches reality\u2026 many Christmas memories are full of tension, not tinsel\u2026 the holidays are just another excuse for Mommy to get drunk, or Daddy to be with his new family\u2026 yet another reminder that the one we love is far away or perhaps never coming back\u2026 The suicide rate is extraordinarily high\u2026 depression as common as \u201cJoy to the World\u201d<\/i>\u2026 more people hurt at Christmas than we initially imagine. For those tired of the hollow hope\u2026 the good news is God is with us. Jesus came to earth to \u201cbring\u2026 good news\u2026 for all the people.\u201d<\/i> Regardless of your situation, Christmas is the best gift you\u2019ll ever get, because: <\/p>\n
(1) it\u2019s the costliest you\u2019ll ever receive because it cost Jesus His life; <\/p>\n
(2) it\u2019s the only gift that lasts forever; <\/p>\n
(3) it\u2019s one you can enjoy for the rest of your life.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For many people Christmas is filled with dread instead of delight. Author Jon Walker writes this: \u2018I\u2019m sitting in a fast-food restaurant observing a young girl celebrating an early Christmas with her mother. Her presents are spread out across the booth and she just said, \u201cI miss you, Mommy.\u201d \u201cI miss you too, Baby,\u201d her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}