Today I read the first six chapters of One Wintry Night to the four “middles” – Kelsey, Morgan, Garrett and Fiona. This is a book written by Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham. It is about the Christmas story, but it is unique in that it starts with Creation and goes all the way to the Resurrection.
When I started reading it last year, it seemed to start out slowly, but this year it’s familiar, and I was able to fly right through these chapters.
The kids were engaged and responding to what I was reading. What was I reading about? Creation, Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man, and Noah and the Flood. She ties these stories to the first Christmas by showing how they are part of the rescue plan that God has been carrying out ever since that first disobedience and separation from Him.
Ruth tells it in such an interesting way that even though my kids have heard these stories a million times, they were actively listening and enjoying them.
This is a story within a story. The main story is about a boy who gets stranded in a snowstorm at the cabin of an elderly woman. He had sprained his ankle, besides being snowed in, so he has to sit still for a while. She entertains him by telling him the Christmas story. He ends up being there for a while, so she tells him the back story of the Christmas story. It is a great overview of the main story of the Bible, and God’s great plan of redemption for mankind. It also has beautiful illustrations by Richard Jesse Watson.
You can order it here at Amazon. It’s not too late!
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
