Along with my annual reading of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (which I’m on target to finish tomorrow), each year I also watch my favorite Christmas movie.
It’s a Wonderful Life? No. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vaction? No, but I will watch that, too! Miracle on 34th Street? Nope. White Christmas? Though I do love a little Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye goodness, that isn’t it either.
My favorite Christmas movie is The Bishop’s Wife. Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young star in this movie about a minister that is caught up in the trappings of the unimportant, and the angel sent to help him. Hollywood remade the movie a few years ago, calling it The Preacher’s Wife, but I would recommend skipping that travesty altogether.
If you haven’t seen the movie, you should check it out. It airs several times through the holiday season, or you can pick up the DVD.
In the movie, there is a sermon given, one that I’d like to share with you right now:
“Tonight, I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking.
Once upon a midnight clear there was a child’s cry.
A blazing star hung over a stable, and Wise Men came with birthday gifts.
We haven’t forgotten that night down through the ages.
We celebrate it with a star hung on a Christmas tree, and a cry of bells, and gifts; especially with gifts.
We bind them and wrap them, and we put them under the tree.
You give me a tie, I give you a book, Aunt Martha always wanted an orange squeezer,
Uncle Harry could use a new pipe; oh, we haven’t forgotten anyone, adult or child.
All the stockings are filled, all that is, except one, and we have forgotten even to hang it up!
The stocking for the child born in a manger.
It’s His birthday we are celebrating, you know. Don’t let us ever forget that.
Let us ask ourselves what He would wish for most, and then let each of us put in his share -
loving kindness, warm hearts, and an out-stretched hand -
all the shining gifts that make peace on earth.”
Merry Christmas, everyone. May God bless you and keep you as we celebrate the birth of our Savior!
- Billy
