I Was Just Thinking...........

I love Christmas. I love putting up the Christmas tree(s), decorating the house, listening to Christmas music. We drive around the neighborhood looking at the houses adorned with lights and yard decorations. The kids and I get in the kitchen and make special candies and cookies. I even enjoy shopping and getting gifts for people. We get together with family and share stories, food and gifts. And yet I know, not one of these things has anything to do with Christmas.

Christmas is the date we use to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Somehow, man has taken something beautiful and simple, and complicated it. For many it has turned into a time of stress, not peace. And what I’ve been reminded of this year, is just not the date in which Christ was born, but why.

I’m a sinner. I was separated from God. The fellowship had been broken, but this is not what God wanted. He wanted fellowship with me and every person who walked or will walk this earth. And because of His great love for us, and His desire for the separation to be restored, he sent us a Savior, Jesus. And Jesus came to restore our broken souls. Regardless of what we’ve done, he takes us as we are, and restores the fellowship that he so desires of us, and that we so desperately need. And to say that he’s a “gift” to us, seems to me to trivialize what God really did for us. Again we seem to want to put marketing terms to something that can’t be marketed….because it’s free.

I don’t think there is anything evil in a tree, decorations or exchanging gifts. I just think it’s important that we understand why Christmas ever came into being.

…. and that my friend is not just a gift, it’s EVERYTHING to me.