{"id":947,"date":"2010-12-19T15:40:18","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T22:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/?p=947"},"modified":"2010-12-19T15:40:18","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T22:40:18","slug":"merry-christmas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/merry-christmas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Merry Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

A Jon Post<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I know it\u2019s \u201cthat time of year\u201d again. To be honest, I haven\u2019t felt it so much. I don\u2019t want this to be one of those depressing or move-everyone-to-pity-the-poor-African posts or anything\u2026 I just want to ask you all to pray with me.
\nThis is my prayer.<\/p>\n

O come\u2026 O come\u2026 Immanuel.<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a Christmas song and I find myself praying it often recently.<\/p>\n

\u2026From depths of Hell Thy people save
\nAnd give them victory o’er the grave\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
\nAnd death’s dark shadows put to flight\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026And open wide our heavenly home;
\nMake safe the way that leads on high,
\nAnd close the path to misery\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel
\nShall come to thee, O Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n

I sat with my wife with a man who just had surgery on his tumor and who lay in agony in the recovery room hundreds of miles from his family. He looked into my eyes and said \u201cThank you so much for visiting me. Yesterday, I saw some people in here who had family visiting them and I just looked at my empty corner of the room and cried. I knew I had no one to visit me. But you\u2026 you are my family. You came to visit me. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

O come\u2026 O come\u2026
\n<\/em>Immanuel<\/em><\/p>\n

My wife knelt next to a girl who shares her age. She is dying. She has no family except a sister who is very poor and cannot come to visit her. She cannot sit up by herself so whenever Layne comes her contagious smile lights up the room because Layne is the only one who will put her arms around her and help her sit up, if only for an hour.<\/p>\n

O come\u2026 O come\u2026
\n<\/em>Immanuel<\/em><\/p>\n

I often hold a specific little boy in my arms. He does his best to look healthy and strong but he limps, ever so slightly as he walks. He has deep black marks on his legs and his little body has wasted away from repeated yet futile chemotherapy treatments for his Sarcoma. He\u2019s got one chemotherapy treatment left and then the doctors will send him home. They\u2019ll send him home to die.<\/p>\n

O come\u2026 O come\u2026
\n<\/em>Immanuel<\/em><\/p>\n

See, there\u2019s a beauty in all of this. All of these stories have a beauty. It\u2019s told in the end of that song.<\/p>\n

Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel
\nShall come to thee, O Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Immanuel will come. He will come. I know it\u2019s trite and easy to say but when we live here in a reality that is so encompassed in pain, this is our hope.
\nImmanuel will come.
\nSo yes, to me, to my wife, this is a very merry Christmas. It\u2019s a merry Christmas because we know\u2026 we know<\/em> that we can follow the plea of the title of that song
\nO come\u2026 O come\u2026 Immanuel
\n<\/em>With the action at the end
\nRejoice! Rejoice!<\/em><\/p>\n

Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n

\"Family<\/a>

Merrry Christmas From the Hellers<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Jon Post I know it\u2019s \u201cthat time of year\u201d again. To be honest, I haven\u2019t felt it so much. I don\u2019t want this to be one of those depressing or move-everyone-to-pity-the-poor-African posts or anything\u2026 I just want to ask you all to pray with me. This is my prayer. O come\u2026 O come\u2026 Immanuel.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}