Before we are even able to sit at our thanksgiving tables and give thanks the world shouts “Christmas”! Hurry or you’ll be left behind! Shop! Buy! Spend! Decorate! Organize! And suddenly there are 50 emails that weren’t there before about savings you just can’t pass up! Fed Ex is working overtime. Packages are piled high at your door. Mothers are flocking to department stores to find the perfect Christmas attire for the perfect photos and green and red outfits for each day of the week. Families are stressed. Husbands are hunched over their computers looking at finances. Wives are striving for perfection and drinking hoards of coffee to keep them running like hamsters on wheels. Kids are circling every single toy in the catalogue for Santa. It’s madness. It’s overwhelming. It’s Christmas?
Yesterday, my doorbell rang. It was a package from one of my dearest friends. I opened it and had to sit down for a minute. It was a book. I turned the crisp pages carefully and studied the words, letting them pour over me and into my spirit. As I did, the world got quiet. My to-do lists vanished and in that moment, even the most beautiful decoration I had could not compete with the words on the page.
I read: “If we could condense all the truths of Christmas into only three words, these would be the words: “God with us.”
“God saw what the world most desperately needed, and what He chose to give us was Himself....This is the message of Christmas."
The stuff that our humans eyes crave on earth, are merely dust in the wind compared to the treasures our spirits will inherit in heaven when we meet our maker. And the story of our maker...the Christmas story is the only gift whose wrappings can bring peace until we get there.
This Christmas, let the true meaning adorn you. It will be the most beautiful decoration you’ve ever had in your home and your heart.
