It’s Christmas. It’s the season where Christians celebrate a Savior who gave up everything to come and dwell with broken people. Will I be like Him? Will you? Will we look and find those people in our family, our community, our church, our neighborhood who need love?

One of our family’s yearly Christmas traditions is to take the subway downtown and walk past Toronto’s Bay Street Christmas windows. Enclosed behind each pane is a cozy, festive miniature Christmas scene. One window might be a traditional Victorian home hosting a cheery Christmas Eve gathering, and the next window an old-fashioned small town with wrought iron streetlamps and cheerful carolers. And on they go. I love these windows, and each year, just for fun, I pretend that I get to choose which festive scene to step into for the night.

The truth is, as we walk through this life, there are windows all around us—scenes that, if our eyes are open and we’re ready, we can step inside.

Walk with me for a moment. Let me take you past two other Christmas windows.

What Will You Choose?

First window: a cozy living room, a crackling fire, and a mantle decorated with pine boughs and twinkle lights. Filling this room are pretty women and handsome men who are talking, laughing, clinking glasses, and enjoying each other’s friendship; smartly dressed children are playing games and sneaking chocolates.

Second window: a government-funded nursing home for low-functioning seniors; a stale-smelling lobby filled with people who are broken, hurting, and alone: an old, white-haired woman whose mind broke long ago is drooling, her head drooping, her eyes vacant, and beside her is an old man with two missing legs who is confined to a wheelchair.

Two scenes. And a choice.

If we could step into either scene, which would we choose? In the first, we’d be cozy and warm, merry and bright. In the second, we’d minister and serve; we’d spend and be spent.

As Christians, we’re looking to the One whose birth we celebrate at Christmas time to lighten this world, but what if He lightens it through us?

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