Matthew 1:21: "She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

There was once an old woman who lived in a big, old Victorian house filled with the many treasures she had collected over her eighty-nine years.  When the time came that she could no longer care for herself, her relatives arranged for her to have an estate sale. They told her that everything had to go, since there wasn't going to be much room in the nursing home.

After almost all of the old woman's lovely things had been sold, they packed her few remaining clothes and possessions into an old chest of drawers that she had inherited from her grandmother. The woman also insisted on taking a very large wooden trunk which she said her father had crafted from scrap lumber. It had been a Christmas gift to her mother in 1913, the year before she was born. They put the chest of drawers, the trunk, and the old woman into the minivan and set out for her new home.

When they arrived at the nursing home they expected that she would be very sad; that this would be a difficult day with many tears. But the old woman was smiling as they walked in the door behind the cart that carried the old chest of drawers and the cherished trunk. She was absolutely beaming, as if this was one of the happiest days of her life.

Just then the load on the cart shifted and the contents of the trunk spilled out onto the floor. There were packets of bright-colored wrapping paper, bundles of aged Christmas cards, a carolers songbook, hand-knit Christmas stockings, a string of colored lights, a porcelain angel in a yellowed plastic bag, dozens Christmas ornaments in their original boxes, and a miniature nativity set carved from ivory. Tiny shepherds, camels, wise men, Mary, Joseph, a manger, a stable and the babe were strewn all about.

"Oh my," the old woman laughed, "I guess I need to travel lighter." She knelt down, picked up the little lord Jesus figure, and gently laid him in the manger. "You are all I need," she whispered, as if speaking to him alone. And, then turning to her nephew, the one who had driven the minivan, she said, "Jerry, why don't you take this old trunk home. And if you don't want it, give it to one of your sisters. Maybe they can get some use out of some of this old stuff." She laughed again as Jerry helped her to her feet.

 One of the aides who had come to escort the old woman asked her how she could be so happy on a day like this. She said, "You haven't even seen your room yet," in a tone of voice that suggested that it wasn't really very nice.

The old woman smiled and said, "Oh, I don't have to see it. I know it will be all right. I've learned to be content wherever I am. God has been so good to me. I feel so blessed."

All those years she had been packing Christmas in her heart, the kind of Christmas you can take with you wherever you go.