If you didn´t have snow and cold, would you still have Christmas?
If you didn´t have presents and twinkling candles, would you still have Christmas?
If you didn´t have commercialism telling you to buy stuff, would you still have Christmas?
If you didn´t have sweaters with ugly blinking trees... oh wait, everyone wishes that that would just stay away from Christmas...
The reason I ask all of this is because I don´t. Yep, that´s right. As I walk down my very normal street, I see people going about their normal business. When I leave the grocery store, I don´t hear the friendly ¨Merry Christmas¨ nor is there snow. Instead I am wearing flip flops and t-shirts and hearing the normal sounds of techno blaring from a nearby car. Is it still Christmas? I wish I could say YES... Christmas is in the heart, not in the presents or the decorations, but instead I´m going to be honest and say it doesn´t feel like Christmas.
But one thing it is, it is time to celebrate... why? Not for the trees or the lights but because many years ago God decided that it was time. It was time to give up his very precious Son so that I could have eternal life. As the clock strickes midnight tonight, I won´t be with my family like I have been for the past 26 years, but I will be thankful because Christ came so that every year I have had and will have can be lived for his glory.
Merry Christmas from the other side of the globe... may Jesus show you what Christmas is all about.
2 comments:
Love you Jamie.. and for what it's worth I have no tree in my apartment and there is no snow here... But what ever you want to call it, it is the time we celebrate the birth of our precious Savior Jesus Christ, and if that's what makes it Christ-mas then it is....
((((((((((((((Jamie)))))))))))))))))
Jamie, my wife and I didn't put up a tree this year either and we still had Christmas! I was laid off last February (that's why I was able to spend 6 weeks in Loja) so we didn't spend nearly as much money on Christmas gifts as last year, but we still had Christmas. We didn't have our two kids home (that's another whole story in itself) but we still had Christmas. We didn't have a Christmas Eve candlelight service at Church because there was snow and ice on the ground but we still had Christmas. It's not the lights or decorations or gifts or even really the traditions that make it Christmas and it's not the way we feel or what the weather is like; what makes it Christmas is Christ and the fact that God Himself came in the form of a baby so that He could do for us what we could not do for ourselves, save us from our sins; that makes it Christmas. And in spite of no tree and few presents, it was still CHRISTmas because of His presence, the best present of all!!
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