Are you guilty like me of not "feeling" the christmas spirit especially when it is 80 degrees outside and all the songs on the radio are singing about a "white christmas" or "frosty the snowman"? So you put that fake tree up and spray it with evergreen scent and untangle all those lights that you thought you carefully packed away the year before. Then you painstakingly climb that ladder and about break both your legs trying to put lights outside of the house bigger and better than anyone in the neighborhood and yet after all that you still are not "feeling" it? So the obvious next thing to do is bake some cookies, candy and then go out into the chaos with all the other shoppers and wait in long lines to buy just the right gift and wrap it with the perfect paper and gorgeous bow and place it under the tree. You sit back and look at your handiwork but you just have this feeling that something is missing! Then finally the temperatures fall and you get to wear that sweater that you love (but everyone thinks is ugly) and you with delight turn the fireplace on and drink in all the ambiance! Ahhhhhh finally....you "feel" like it is Christmas! But yet....if only it would snow....
The problem is that we are looking for something and we aren't quite sure what it looks or feels like. The Jewish community at the time of Christ's birth missed out because they had come to expect the Messiah to be revealed in great glory and splendor and not in a manger and in less-than royal circumstances. In fact they still are looking for their messiah!
We all equate God with glamour, glitter and glory and sometimes miss Him in the little things. We have to remember that He chose to show himself to some of the most dirtiest and lowliest of professions and in a way none of us would ever imagined!
I believe that His arrival was to show us that His ways are not like ours. Everything man thinks is true and right are actually the opposite. The things we care about this time of year are not what He cares about at all. Now don't get me wrong...I believe the gifts and ambience of the season are WONDERFUL things! But what we yearn for are actually things we cannot buy or create. HE created the only thing that truly will make us have that Christmas spirit..it is the love of our Father in having Jesus come to this world as a baby to save a suffering and sinful humanity. What we are looking for lives within us as Christians and that is all we need.
Hope is what we look for and when we see that baby in a manger we see our future which is laced with forgiveness, freedom and the love that every human life longs for. When we look at the star on our tree we are reminded of our God who in the heavens looks down and smiles at us. The twinkling lights remind me of all the angels who are dispatched in the supernatural to protect me. The gifts are a result of the blessings God has given me with family and friends. The ornaments are every good thing he longs to give me. Everything about Christmas leads me to Him if I choose to see it.
Don't feel the Christmas Spirit? Well look outside yourself...Christ is in everything and we can choose to feel it or not. Don't miss this special season because it doesn't look or feel right....HE lives in me and you and for that WE will celebrate!
Adjust that Crown,
