4 X 1

With great joy, expectation and anticipation Advent Season has come. I love this time of year as the Holidays bring refreshing time with family and friends. There are meals with our favorite foods, special church services, Christmas music playing everywhere that proclaims Christ to the nations. I love Christmas time!

Yet I am also very much conflicted in this time of the year. Maybe you are too. Do you ever look at the world you live in and wonder “what is going on?” As a local radio talk show host says frequently, “I am living in a world I don’t understand!” I think it was two weeks before Thanksgiving when all the stores I went to had their Christmas line out and the music was playing. I would like to think they are in the Christmas spirit, but truth be told, they are in the money making spirit.

I feel like I am getting sucked in the vortex of commercialism and cannot escape it. I look around and see materialism overtaking the culture. Christmas becomes less about Jesus each year and more about “what I can get.”

I was asked recently by a youth pastor friend of mine “would children be scarred if they didn’t get a Christmas gift?” As a single guy with no kids, my response was easy “nope.” But my friends with kids were slower to respond. Not that I am saying to get rid of gift giving for Christmas, but I think gifts become the object of worship and Jesus takes a back seat.

Why do we give gifts at Christmas? Some respond that it is because the three wisemen gave gifts to Jesus. Others say its because of God’s gift of Jesus to us. Whether it was one of these or both, there is a good beginning to the tradition. The wisemen sacrificially gave to worship the Savior. God gave sacrificially to a rebellious alienated people in order that they may be reconciled to Him. We give out of love of our families in honor or Jesus…or do we?

For the past several years I have been thinking about this over and over. I am deeply saddened and convicted because each year I recognize the desire in my own heart to bow down at the alter of materialism instead of kneeling at the manger. I look for ways each year to help me see the Christ in Christmas and not just a slogan. I try to avoid getting caught up in what I am going to get and see more what can I give to better others around me.

This year I began the “4 Gospels in 1 Month” challenge. I wanted to spend extra time in the Nativity Narrative, but decided that what Christmas is about is the first Advent of Jesus, that is, His first coming. It’s not just about the cradle but also the perfect life of Christ, the rejection of Jesus, the substitutionary atonement Jesus paid on the Cross and His resurrection. So with 3 chapters a day, I am reacquainting myself with my Savior. Straight through Matthew, Mark, Luke and then John. This Christmas I want to spend more time with Jesus, I want to love Jesus more and I pray that I have opportunity to give Jesus to others. I want Christmas to be about Christ.