Merry Christmas from the Eckman family!  One of our favorite Christmas stories is The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg.  I remember many Christmas seasons going to our favorite bookstore in Old Market (a quaint shopping area in Omaha), and reading The Polar Express with our children, Jonathan and Joanna.  It is beautifully illustrated; a real treasure.  Recently, a movie was made with the same title.  Although it adds much to Van Allsburg’s story line, the movie is rapidly becoming a holiday favorite of our family.  There are two lines from the movie that stand out to me:  (1)  The conductor states to the young boy, the story’s main character, “It doesn’t matter where you’re going; what matters is deciding to get on.”  The boy is wrestling with his decision to board the Polar Express and the conductor stresses the thoughtful nature of that decision.  Life is like that.  What often matters is not the mundane tasks of each day; what matters is our trust in God—our daily decision to believe Him, to believe that He always has our best interests at heart—even in the mundane tasks of each day.  (2)  Later on, that same conductor relates to the young boy, “The most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.”  That is a key aspect of the Christian worldview—believing in a God that we cannot see.  Max Lucado has phrased it, “Can I afford to believe in what I have never seen?”  The resounding answer is “yes!”  I think one of the reasons we enjoy The Polar Express—both the book and the movie—is its focus on childlike faith.  Christmas reminds us of the profound nature of our faith—that the babe in the manger on Christmas morning was God Himself!  The Second Person of the Trinity added to His deity humanity for the express purpose of being our substitute.  God the Father sent Him as His gift to lost humanity.  He would die so that we can be saved from our sins and our hopelessness—and live!  “The most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.”  Jesus is the most real thing in the world and we can see Him with the eye of faith—and that decision is the most important decision of life.  Then each day becomes a lesson in faith, learning and living in dependence on Him.