So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys – and St. Nicholas too:
St. Nicholas always has a sleigh full of toys wherever he goes on Christmas Eve! It is wonderful that his bag is always full, brimming with the perfect toy for each girl or boy!
This magical quality of Santa’s toy bag has a great lesson for us.
(All bolding is mine.)
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.
And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
How abundant are the good things
that you have stored up for those who fear you,
that you bestow in the sight of all,
on those who take refuge in you.
Lamentations 3:22-23
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
These verses tell of God’s never-ending and abundant love and blessings for us.
Our leaves will always be green, and God will always meet our needs. He is a God of abundance, and his compassion is new every morning.
Can you see how this is like Santa’s toy bag that is always full of “blessings” for each child? It never runs out, and neither does God’s care for us!
Did you know that without Santa, the toy bag runs out of toys and becomes ordinary? But when held in Santa’s hand, it becomes extraordinary!
We need to hold tightly to the hand of Jesus and walk with him in his extraordinary light! When we walk away from our Lord and Savior, we are unplugged from our primary relationship, and everything in life will shift back to the ordinary.
This Christmas, let Santa’s sleigh full of toys be a reminder that we have blessings beyond what could ever fit in a sleigh. We have a Savior who loved us enough to die for us so we can have a relationship with God the Father and be adopted as his children!
SURPRISE PRESENT
Sleigh of Blessings!
Let’s build a cute candy sleigh full of blessings!
Instead of wrapped packages, we will have Hershey miniatures with custom wrappers labeled with some of the blessings the Lord has given us in our life! Each wrapper template can be printed and custom-designed on a photo editing program or by hand.
For the sleigh, use two candy canes for runners, and hot glue a wide flat candy bar down for the base like a KitKat shown here.
Link to site where this template is found.
#1 The candy cane, shapes, and text were done in Edit with Paint 3D.
#2 The red X’s show this is the wrong orientation for text on the wrapper- keep text horizontal!
#3 There are lines that show where the glue is applied and what part of the wrapper ends up on the back of the bar (next to “My Brother”).
#4 The bottom left corner shows a child was blessed by the Christmas tree, so we decorated the wrapper, cut it out and folded it for you to see (would be wrapped around candy bar.)
#5 The bottom right corner shows how to use a ruler to fold the wrapper so it is straight. This ruler is the dimensions of a Hershey’s miniature bar, just under an inch.
You can see in the photos above the plain Hershey’s miniatures, and how they turned out printed with custom Christmas wrappers! So fun!
Once all your bars are wrapped with blessings, they can be stacked on the base of your sleigh and held in place with ribbon.
Enjoy brainstorming all the abundant blessings from the Lord with your children, and creating your Sleigh of Blessings!
Don’t forget, you are extraordinary when you take the hand of Jesus, the giver of abundant blessings!