Dear Family and Friends,

 It’s December 12, 2023 as I write this letter, the temperature is currently 38 degrees and rain is on the way. According to my weather app, there is a 57% chance today, 91% tomorrow and 82% on Friday! Actually, we are going to have a mild and possibly wet Christmas with highs in the lower to high 50’s, if Accu Weather is correct. What a wonderful blessing from Heaven! Hopefully this land is on the way out of a 3 year+ drought!

 Kids are growing up and families are branching out, yet we still take the time to honor our Oak Family Christmas. This year on Saturday, December 16, 2023, it will be the 65^Th year we have celebrated it in this house! Our celebration is much like the old TV show, The Waltons. Everyone brings a covered dish to share... so much food... from lasagna to every dessert one can imagine!

 While a slide show of past Oak Family Christmases plays on the TV in the background, we enjoy the memories as we visit. Some are playing Ping-Pong, others a game of cards but the highlight is the reading of the story of the Christ Child from Luke chapter 2 out of the Holy Bible. After the reading of the scriptures, we join our voices together as we sing old familiar Christmas carols. It is partly tradition and partly love of family that brings us together. What an amazing legacy for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to witness in this broken world!

 Yes, God is LOVE and families were His idea...His best expression of LOVE! He was the first Father to give away the bride. According to Psalm 139, Father God wrote a book about every person ever conceived BEFORE He created the universe and then the worlds! The title of each book is that person’s name! (So, even if you think your name came from your parents...it really was implanted in their minds by Father God!) these books were placed on a shelf in the Heavenly library along with the books about the creation of the lands, the boundary’s where each person would live, the time and season of their life. Nothing is random.

 We can read a short story in the book of Genesis about creation. When God took a pile of earth and formed a human being, just as a sculptor would form a piece of art, He made the human being in His image... the human actually looked like His Father God! When God blew His Holy Breath, a part of His Spirit, into the human being... it became a living, breathing man!

 We know from the scriptures that evil has been present in this world for thousands of years... it’s a broken world. If we continue to read the Holy Bible, we get a picture of history and why we are here on this present earth. When we believe the WORD of God, repent from our sins, and receive Jesus Christ as our personal savior and are born again, baptized in the Spirit, then God gives His angels instructions to get our book down off the shelf.

 God has written in each book all of His hopes, dreams and desires for our life here on earth.. every detail and not one thing was bad! We activate His divine help, His ministering and warring angels when we accept Jesus as our Savior and are obedient to His WORD. He instructs them to come to earth and help us get on the pathway He has written about our life. We must remember that God equates LOVE with obedience. (John 14:15: If you love me, then obey me)

 Three things Jesus said were important. The first are the two greatest commandments... we are to love the LORD our God above all things and to Love our neighbor as you love yourself. The second is to confess our sins and repent...turn away from repeating the things we are repenting from. The third is to forgive those who have caused us harm in any way. If we do not forgive others God will not forgive us.

(Matthew chapter 6: 14-15: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”)

 It was the price of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ ... it was His shed blood on the cross that caused God to forgive all human beings for their sins. That is why the angels sang “Glory to God in the highest... Peace on earth and good will to man”, when they announced the birth of the Savior to the shepherds. God was no longer angry with all humans because His only begotten Son was come to earth as a human being to redeem us back into the Family of God!

 Our time here on earth is only a very thin line in eternity. I guess you could say that we are actually qualifying for our position in the coming 1000-year reign of Jesus Christ here on earth... as it is written in the book of Revelation.

 Revelation 20:1: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.”

 Time is short...much shorter today than it was 2000 years ago! Someday very soon Jesus will return for His brothers and sisters who have believed in Him. My prayer for you all is that if you have not received Jesus as your Savior... that you consider the cost and choose wisely. We cannot change the past, but God says that when we repent of our sins, He does not remember them... they do not exist. Today exists, and the future is waiting for us. In the Holy Bible, Romans chapter 8:1, it literally says that there is NO file anywhere of your sins.. repented sins are erased and there is no evidence against you in the courts of Heaven! Jesus’s precious blood has covered every sin! It is as if they never were! You are clean and holy because of Jesus’ blood shed for the remission of all sin in every age known to man...past, present and future!

 What an amazing gift! Glory, Honor and Praise to the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob! Thank you Jesus for laying aside your kingship in Heaven and coming to earth to redeem us back into the Family of God! Surely, our God is a God of compassion, LOVE, Peace, Joy, Mercy and Grace! He is also the God who repays our enemies for the bad, unlawful and unfair things done to His children. He does this in His own timing. He says that vengeance is His to repay, we are to love our enemy and pray for them to come to know Jesus... because every human being was formed with great love in the image of our Awesome God and He loves everyone... not desiring that anyone should perish, but that everyone would be saved and live with Him forever as His Family.

 Merry and Blessed Christmas from my house to your house and a Happy and prosperous New Year!!!

Many Blessing, Much Love, 

Karen