A few days before Christmas, a six-year-old boy walked up to a Department Store Santa Claus and said,

"You don't have to worry about me this year. We've got Visa and Mastercard!"

For weeks now, many of you, perhaps, have been asking one another, "What do you want for Christmas?"

A child's quick answer might have been a bike, or some video games or a puppy. But for many of us Adults, perhaps, it has been more difficult to put into words what we really want for Christmas.

Some of you might remember Dave Garroway, the first Television Personality to host the "Today show" …

After he had become a very wealthy man, Garroway was once asked to put his Christmas desire into words. He replied, "I've noticed when people are asked what they want for Christmas, nine times out of ten the answer is something material. I happen to be one of those people who can afford almost anything he wants. But I find what I really want I can't but at all. I want peace: peace of mind and heart and soul, the kind of peace you have when you really don't want anything material."

Deep down at the center of each and every one of us, there is the longing for wholeness of life.

Deep down at the center of each of us there is the longing to be complete persons, the longing to "get it all together." In other words, the longing for peace of mind and heart and soul.

For some, the search for wholeness of life is an endless cycle of having to go one better than our peers.

For others, it becomes simply the business of using all kinds of gimmicks to try to find fulfillment - one's good looks, for example. But sooner or later the discovery is made that mere gimmicks do not work.

By facing this squarely, one can begin to acknowledge, down deep inside, that the only genuine Source of wholeness of life is the love that is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

The truth of Christmas Day is that the Word became Flesh to show us, in a once-and-for-all way, what the business of living is all about.

The Word became Flesh to show us the Love of a Gracious God and how to share it.

The Apostle John tells us in today's Gospel Reading that "the Word (Jesus the Christ) was the true light which enlightens everyone" (John 1:9). And He lives among us this Christmas Day, assuring us that God wants to light up our lives, that God wants to show us how to become fully human.

He lives among us this Christmas Day to tell us that we will overcome our fears and anxieties if only we will respond to God's love for us with unconditional trust.

Such trust which Jesus teaches us is not something superficial, not merely a surface religious expression. Rather, it is a style of life. It is a style of living in which you actually trust yourself so completely to God's Loving Presence that you are empowered, moment-by-moment, to handle your fears and anxieties. (Notice I said "handle," not "get rid of.")

As finite beings, we'll never be able to rid ourselves completely of worry, but trust in God's Love and concern enables us to cast off the destructive anxiety that robs us of the good life.

Trust in a caring God enables us to genuinely experience peace of mind and heart and soul.

In a book entitled, "The Kingdom Within," the Author writes of his boyhood summers in an old New England Farmhouse. The dwelling was over a century and one-half old, and had never been modernized. Consequently, the water supply came from an old well, and the cool, pure water it supplied was a joy to drink on hot summer days. The well ran faithfully, even in periods of drought. But the time came when the house was updated, and modern plumbing was installed. The old faithful well was abandoned, and so remained for several years. Until, one day, the Author of the book decided to uncover the old well that had served him in his boyhood. In his words, "As I removed the cover I fully expected to see the same dark cool moist depth I had known so well as a boy. But I was due for a shock.

"The well was bone dry, and it took many inquiries on my part to understand what had happened. A well of this kind is fed by hundreds of tiny rivulets along which seep a constant water supply. As the water is drained from the well, more water moves into it along the rivulets, keeping them clear and open.

But when such a well is not used, and the water is not regularly drawn, the tiny rivulets close up. Our well, which had run for so many years, was dry - not because there was no water, but because it had not been used."

The Living Waters of God's Christmas Gift of Love, never cease to flow. But our souls can dry up from non-use it we are not as a matter of lifestyle from Christmas-to-Christmas, gathering joyfully at the well of God's Grace and partaking of its loving waters.

Why had God, our Father, Creator of the Universe, chosen to become the one of us in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ? The answer is simply, LOVE.

That is why we are told, "Above all, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony."

Love does not make the world go 'round,' as through History were in a senseless rotation. No, Love makes the world move on.

In a little town just down the hill from Jerusalem, God became a man.

The very center of all that is, all that was and all that will be, became one with human history - your history and my history.

The truth of Christmas Day is that the "Word became Flesh" to show us in a once-and-for-all way what life is all about. The Word became Flesh to show us what it means to be fully human. The Word became Flesh to show us the Love of a Gracious God and to show us how to share it. Christmas, the Apostle John tells us, is "The Glory of an only Son coming from the father, filled with enduring Love."

And thus we are given the Christmas Gift of peace of heart and mind and soul.

Pass it on, from moment-to-moment, from day-to-day and from Christmas-to-Christmas.

Thanks be to God!!!!!

Amen!!!