“Tiny Town” is out, and Diane says this year’s is the best ever. “Tiny Town” is the little village we put out every Christmas next to House One on campus. We started this years ago when I built a little church, modeled after the first church we served in Venedy, Illinois. In the following years, I built a parsonage, a convenience store, a barn, farmhouse and windmill. New this year is a machine shed, where our Tiny Town farmer stores his combine, tractor and other implements. A silo will show up this year and construction is under way on another house. Diane puts out the lighted Christmas trees, shooting stars, and makes sure the full moon is always shining over Tiny Town.
What delights us most is parents bringing their toddlers to wander around the buildings. They move the cow from the barn, the combine ends up in various parts of town (once it ended up on the roof of the convenience store), and the kids wonder at all the lights. “Christmas was made for children,” but children like you and me live in “Real Town,” where work is hard, people can be difficult, and life is not a wonderland. Even the church in Real Town can be disappointing compared to our youthful ideas. More than children, we adults need the blessing of seeing our Real Town in the light of Christmas.
Isn’t this true, we’d like God to give us a carefree “Tiny Town?” The truth is God’s grace upends what we adult children imagine we know about life. Real Town is where we live and Real Town is where we see God at work in our own personal lives. He comes with countless gifts of loving kindness for life as we are really, honestly coping with it. We can indeed live in Real Town with good cheer because Jesus came, Jesus comes and Jesus will come again.
One of my first rough carpentry projects was the stable outside the Seminary’s chapel. Even better than children in Tiny Town are children going into the stable to be with Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. You can depend on it every year. The children walk right into the manger scene and beaming parents take pictures. That’s how the next generation learns the key to life in Real Town, and that’s how we adults do too, marveling at the manger in our Real Town.
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