Thursday, December 03, 2009

Joy to the world and get your hands off my Tickle Me Elmo.

How did we get here?
How did the celebration of the birth of the Messiah of the world, our path to God, the one who has saved us from eternal destruction, into a one day shopping melee?
I had not heard the term "black Friday" before, is this new or am I living in a cave?
Think about it, we sing happy songs at Christmas, Joy is the theme, celebrate God's gift to humanity.
Then we scratch, claw, over spend, and end up hating the very holiday that we are supposed to be overjoyed about.
We lose the true meaning because somehow we always bring it back to us. It's not about God, it's about being at a store hours before you normally get up. That kills me, let's open our store at 3 am and expect people to be in a good mood! I see people get up at 7 am who are crabby.
Now I realize that not everybody goes nuts at Christmas, many get it. I also want to state that if you want to fight the crowds the day after Thanksgiving, go for it.
But...
If you find yourself ready to kill to get the last $199 laptop, that you want to strangle the family in front of the check out line at Wal-Mart, that you want to say or do things that would get you a free nights stay at the local jail, remember this...
It's really about our salvation, our freedom, our savior.
It's not about maxing our credit cards and finding the biggest bargains.
This was brought home to me at the community Thanksgiving service. I was asked to speak at the service and I talked about what we should really be thankful for. As man came up to me after the service, thanked me, and told me how thankful he was, he had been "clean" for 8 years.
You see Jesus had freed him from an addiction. He understands better than most what an amazing gift God has given each one of us.
That's what Christmas is.
Please understand I find nothing wrong with giving and receiving gifts, one of my biggest thrills is giving my family gifts.
I just want each one of you to stop and think about what Christmas really means.
You might find the joy we sing about.

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