Rescuing the Christmas Tree

It's one of our favorite Christmas traditions...

I can't remember which year we started this tradition...  maybe when Shepard was a new baby.

The whole thing is a word picture...  it was John's idea.  (He's great at word pictures!)

We're trying to teach the kids that the best gift of Christmas is that Jesus came to rescue us!!

So, to help them understand we go rescue a tree...

we go to the store with cut trees and have a blast trying to find the ugliest tree... the one that surely no one will want to buy.  (Honestly, this has turned out to be a whole lot more fun than searching for the perfect tree!  Even the workers at Lowe's got in on it with us this time and had fun helping us.)

 

The tree represents us (sinners) who are in need of a rescue! 

Here is our tree...  ready for a makeover!

 

(This year we tried spraying snow on it - fun!)

 

We always end up loving our tree and it seems precious to us after we have invested so much in it.

(And part of what is making us smile this year is that we have really tall ceilings now and ended up with about the shortest tree available.  But we love it and wouldn't trade it for a big beautiful one.)

 

And, we are reminded that we are thankful for God's gift of rescue to us!

The baby Jesus grew into a man and paid our eternal debt price.

Rejoice!