Everywhere, Everywhere, Christmas Tonight!

It is 2:29 AM Mountain Standard Time, and I am just home from Midnight Mass with my dear friend Anoinette Belvedere, one of the most Christ-like people that I am privileged to call "friend." I guess I should go to sleep...but I don't' want to...I don't want to sleep, I want to stay awake and think about Christmas. Christmas teaches us something different every year, every time it comes...it teaches us. This has been a Christmas unlike any other to me. I have learned about God, about the real nature of God. He has been on my mind every moment of every day. I have a quote on my nightstand, I have had it there for many months.
It says
"If men do not comprehend the nature of God, they do not comprehend themselves."
This quote is actually by Joseph Smith, and it has been on my mind every morning and every night for months and months. Years even. And because of the events of this year, I am finally coming to begin, in a very small way, to understand the true character of God.
He is kinder and more willing to grant miracles than we could ever imagine, and grant them more specifically than we could ever dare to hope.
And, even though I knew this very well before, God is no respecter of persons. Not at all. And blessings are not just for the ones who pray. Thank God. They are for us all; for the Catholics and the Jews and the Buddhists and Animists and Islams and Sikhs and the Taoists and Confucianists and Zoroastratists and Calvinists and the Baptists and the Mormons and the Lutherans and Methodists and Jainists and Hindus and Agnostics and Atheists...all of us. God is in all of us. I have felt it, in every part of myself I have felt it, His love, for us all...even...if we do not believe in Him, He still believes in us.

The dawn is rising Christmas in England, and the light will be coming up over Whitehall Street and Big Ben will ring in Christmas Day in that part of the world.
And, as we are being BOMBED with snow outside in Utah , in Cuba, the palm trees bow, in honor of the birth of the Son of God.
And the people there will dance.
Good Night, Christmas Eve.

I leave you with my favorite Christmas Poem, "Christmas Everywhere" by Phillips Brooks

Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight!
Christmas in lands of the fir-tree and pine,
Christmas in lands of the palm-tree and vine,
Christmas where snow peaks stand solemn and white,
Christmas where cornfields stand sunny and bright.
Christmas where children are hopeful and gay,
Christmas where old men are patient and gray,
Christmas where peace, like a dove in his flight,
Broods o're brave men in the thick of the fight;
Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight!
For the Christ-child who comes is the Master of all;
No palace too great, no cottage too small.

Good Night, everyone.
Merry Christmas, to us all.
Love, Jeanne Elizabeth Madsen