It’s the most wonderful time of the year. I love Christmas. It’s a season filled with love, joy and giving. It’s a time to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus–the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I understand that it can also be a time of anxiety & stress as the realities of life and the endless demands , too often accompany this season.
We do our best, don’t we? We do our best to be filled with joy, peace and love. We do our best with the little or a lot we have to buy/make/re gift Christmas presents for the ones we love. Haha! Let’s just be real. We do our best. We do our best to remember it’s better to give than receive. We do our best to not envy the extravagant Christmas others experience. We do our best. We do our best cultivating a generous and grateful spirit in our children while blessing them with things they want. We do our best.
Then we get an hour into our Christmas errands, with hungry, irritable kids who have screamed, cried and not listened to us, and we lose it. We are out of options and have pulled all the stops… Then we remember we have one more card to pull. You know which one I’m talking about.
“If you don’t behave, you won’t get _______ for Christmas.” We blurt out! They immediately whip into shape and become perfect little elves. We go on our merry, little ways.
Can I encourage you for a second? Can I remind you of a famous little story?
Over 2,000 years ago, God, the creator of the earth, sent His only Son to this earth. In the middle of our mess, our inability to do right, Christmas still came, God still gave us his best, His name is Jesus.
Christmas time is a time to celebrate that best gift that still came when we least deserved it. So, let us not be tempted to use Christmas gifts + presents to keep our kids in line, but instead, let us use this time to show that even when we fall short, mess up or do wrong, God did not or will not withhold His very best from us. In the same way, as we gift our children and those we love, we choose to give, not because they have earned it, but because it is just that….a gift. Not because they have earned it, but because we are generous.
I pray that this is a Holiday season filled with JOY, PEACE, LOVE, HOPE and GENEROSITY.
TRUTH:
“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” Ephesians 2:8-10
DARE:
Keep Jesus at the center of everything we do, this holiday season.
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