Every year it’s the same battle – Consumerism versus Christ. Writing out a wish list, or remembering what it’s really about. The busyness of the season sweeps us all away, and every church sermon series is there to remind us all in its own clever way that Jesus is the reason for the season.
And yet, somehow, I still wonder if that’s really the point. I wonder if I’m not still missing something.
I wrote a blog a number of years ago about Easter and the importance of celebrating it. You see, our human nature is a tale as old as time. Busyness and forgetfulness are nothing new to the human race. Every human being from the beginning of time, no matter their best intentions, is guilty of getting carried away with their own life and everything that goes along with it and sometimes fails to remember what God has done. That is the story time and time again with the Israelites of the Old Testament – one moment God parts the Red Sea for them, the next moment they’re worshipping a golden calf; one moment God feeds them manna from heaven, the next they’re complaining about their lives. It’s easy to read those stories and simply conclude that they must be idiots.
But if we’re truthful, we do the exact same thing.
How often do we get so carried away with our social lives or with our kids’ extracurricular activities that the only time we spend with the Lord is at church on the weekend, if He’s lucky? How many more hours a week do we spend in front of the television set than at His feet and in His presence? How much more time do we spend staying connected with the world via our social networks than we do connecting with our Father?
And yet, our excuse is always that we don’t have time.
There’s a reason God had to command the Israelites to have so many different feasts and festivals every year – to cause them to intentionally take a time out from their own lives and pause long enough to remember what God had done for them, where He had brought them. God commanded they have these feasts every year as a remembrance, to ‘commemorate’ a great thing that God had done for them.
And so it is with Christmas and us today. No, God didn’t command that we celebrate Christmas. But the point is still the same – we need it as a “time out” from our busy, self-centered schedules to stop and remember what an incredible thing God did for us.
Yet, even despite the most well-intentioned sermons and slogans to remind us to keep Christ at the center of it all, we still fail.
Now, I’m an over-thinker if there ever was one. Certainly, I know the real meaning of Christmas. But for the past year or so I’ve really be wrestling with how I can truly and best capture that meaning with how I celebrate. I want to do something more than just attend a Christmas Eve church service. Something more than just read the practically memorized Christmas story aloud each year while everyone’s minds are really on what is awaiting them in just a few short moments beneath the tree. Something more than just buy a gift for an Angel Tree child. And something more than a once-a-year contribution to someone in need. There has to be something more that better captures what Christmas is really about.
And the conclusion I’ve come to, at least for this point in my life, is this: Certainly God gave us the greatest gift in the form of His son on that “first Christmas.” But the point isn’t that He gave us a gift, or even the greatest gift for that matter. The point is that we did not deserve it, and we could in no way, shape, or form repay Him or give anything back to Him in return that is anywhere close to the same worth. He gave us a gift knowing we could never return the favor. And that is how I am choosing to celebrate Christmas – by giving to those who are in need and cannot give anything to me in return. That is the example that God set for us on that first Christmas. And that is the example I want to follow.
I think that I, and everyone else, would be missing the point, though, if we only did this once a year, at Christmas time, in celebration for what God has done for us. We should be celebrating all the time; Christmas is only a designated time to re-focus our attention. As such, I do not want to only give to the needy once a year and call it good. No, I want to celebrate year-round what God has done for me by doing the same for others! And this Christmas is just the starting point, the re-focusing of my attention, for what I hope to live out for the year to come.
And so I challenge you. I challenge you not to settle for another status-quo Christmas with the once-a-year reading the story, attending the service, or writing the check. I challenge you to use this Christmas as a re-focusing of your attention and a call to action to live the next 365 days of your life giving to someone, somewhere who may not deserve it and could never pay you back.
God set the example by sending us Jesus. May we ever so humbly and obediently follow in His footsteps.
