It's What Time of Year?

How do we know it's getting near Christmas? Well when the carolling season starts and the Salvation Army bands start playing Christmas carols in our streets and shopping centres, the weather always seems to be much colder...or is that just my imagination when I've been out carolling in the past!?

The other thing I've noticed that always starts around the same time is all the debates and predictions of whether we will have a white Christmas or not.Certainly if the weather this last week as been anything to go by it could well be a white Christmas this year.
One of my favourite carols is In the Bleak Midwinter as the words talk about many aspects of Christmas, from the weather, the birth of Jesus, to our own personal gift to Christ. The last verse of this carol says:
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him: give my heart.

It is so easy to say we have no talent and nothing to offer God, but each one of has the one thing He desires most...our heart.I find it hard to comprehend how someone so awesome and mighty can ask just one thing of me in return for His love, but it's true, give God your heart this Christmas and accept His unconditional love in return.

In The Bleak Midwinter
In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
but his mother only, in her maiden bliss,
worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him: give my heart.