I must confess that as I grow older, I truly do love the Christmas celebration. 

It has come to mean so much more to me over the years, especially as I have come to know the baby whom it is truly all about. 

So, I thought I would share a little of my story with you, and perhaps it will encourage you in some way or another. To coin a phrase from the late, great Paul Harvey, here’s “The Rest of the Story.”

In my first reflection, I shared the time in my life when, in my youth, I had endeavored to try whitewater rafting with my brother in the month of April. 

It was when the river was flooded and raging, when it was just above freezing, when there had been an ice storm the week before, and when I had left my brains at home. 

I ventured out without a wetsuit or life jacket that morning many years ago to practice for the race. 

I have shared before that it had not worked out so well in that both my brother and I ended up in the water. My brother was carried downstream and I ended up under the water pinned to a tree that had fallen during the ice storm. It was not a great place to be. 

Except that it was my first encounter with the baby of Christmas. He had caused his peace to so firmly rest on me that day that it gave me the presence to listen to his voice as he encouraged me to let go of the branch that I was clinging to for dear life, so that he could in fact save my life. 

Go figure: peace that passes all understanding and letting go, two very powerful messages for all of us from the baby of Christmas.

Of course, most of us know that the baby of Christmas I’m talking about is really God’s own Son, Jesus, and my story comes as I have connected to His story and the promises it brings to each of us if we will only listen to it. The night Jesus was born, the angels of God told the shepherds in the field that the babe would bring peace to men on earth if they would put trust in him. This was my first lesson in the water that day: with God there is a peace which passes all understanding. Not something we trump up from within ourselves through positive thinking or anything like that, but something that exists outside of ourselves and yet can speak into our very being, not only words but a presence that overwhelms the senses with comfort and tranquility. Peace on Earth, good will to all!

The second lesson that day was the message of “let go” and let God. The babe of Christmas, Jesus, had to teach me that real life comes as I trust everything in my life to Him, and I mean everything. I have had to let go of many branches over the years since that day in the water. But each time as I have learned the lesson of the branch, to let go, I have grown in truly knowing the babe of Christmas. Not just knowing about him but knowing him intimately as God with me. Jesus once told his followers, “if you want to live you have to die to self,” or self-branches, as I have discovered. The true gift of Christmas then is learning to live by letting go. 

May Jesus bless your Christmas! 

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Paul Watkins is pastor of Church of the Nazarene, Monroe.