{"id":9424,"date":"2013-12-16T14:58:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T14:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/?p=9424"},"modified":"2013-12-16T14:58:42","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T14:58:42","slug":"christmas-love%e2%80%a6%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/?p=9424","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Love\u2026\u2026."},"content":{"rendered":"

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One of the highlights of my Christmas seasons is a visit to a little church in our town where my daughter and her family attend. \u00a0A week or so before Christmas they have the children’s Christmas nativity play. \u00a0It’s one of the sweetest evenings seeing these little children acting out the scene at the manger, as the Christmas story is read in scripture. \u00a0The small congregation sings some of the most wonderful Christmas hymns, Joy to the World, Away in a Manger, and Silent Night. \u00a0At the end of the evening the pastor shared a precious story. \u00a0It seems another group of children were performing a nativity play and at the end they each held up a card with a single letter, they spelled out C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S \u00a0 L-O-V-E. \u00a0Little Johnny, who was shy and withdrawn, noticed that some in the congregation were laughing. \u00a0Little Johnny knew it was something he had done, but he didn’t know what!<\/p>\n

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The pastor saw that Johnny was holding his letter upside down. \u00a0Little Johnny was holding the M. \u00a0The pastor wisely stepped between Johnny and the child next to him and told the congregation, “see\u00a0little Johnny got it exactly right <\/span><\/span>Christ Was Love. \u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Please let me add, he is still love today, and he will be love in all your tomorrows!\u00a0 He does not want you to feel alone, afraid, unwanted, un-needed, He wants you to know He values you, loves you, and accepts you, and that He is offering you His forgiveness!\u00a0 That’s why He came, that’s what we celebrate every\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Christmas day, and every day!! \u00a0The children did get it right, if we ever had\u00a0<\/span>anything\u00a0in life worth celebrating it is the coming of our Savior!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Merry Christmas,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the pilgrim<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the highlights of my Christmas seasons is a visit to a little church in our town where my daughter and her family attend. \u00a0A week or so before Christmas they have the children’s Christmas nativity play. \u00a0It’s one of the sweetest evenings seeing these little children acting out the scene at the manger, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9426,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9424\/revisions\/9426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}