Christmas is Personal

Most every Christmas,  I will find myself on the receiving end of a comment from some adult who laments that “Christmas has gotten so materialistic.”    This usually will be followed by thoughts that for many people that Christmas has become consumed with only getting gifts that require “bigger barns” to store all the objects we have.  While I know the comments are well meaning and have some substance to them, Christmas at its purest and best is materialistic. 

Only the gospels of Luke and Matthew give some insight into what the birth of Jesus Christ was all about.  The gospel of Mark was in too much of a hurry to share about the life and death of Christ Jesus to tell us about the birthday of Jesus.  And the gospel of John is a “gospel of a different color” from the other 3 gospels.  The closest Christmas story that John has is found in John 1:14  where we read:

And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.  

In Christmas, we see God come to us in material, human  form.  While our Christmas gifts might come to us in a form made of  cotton, wool, or plastic,  God comes to us in Christmas in human material and flesh  in a child born to Mary named Jesus.     God is flesh and blood at Christmas in Christ Jesus.   While most of us yearn to hold a child, this child named Christ Jesus grows to become a man who would hold on his shoulders the sins of the whole world. 

What an awesome gift God gives us at Christmas in the gift of Christ Jesus.  Our joy and challenge is follow the example of Christ Jesus and make Christmas personal.   As God came to us up close and personal in the life of Christ Jesus,  we have the opportunity to  make the love of God visible in the people we are each and everyday.    We live in a world where love is a stranger to so many people.   Oh, to follow the example of the God we know in Christ Jesus and let the love of God become incarnate in who we are and what we do.  That is my Christmas hope and prayer for myself.  How about you?  Merry Christmas.-   Pastor Randy Wall

Prayer:  “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend on us we pray.  Cast out our sin and enter in. Be born in us today.  We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell.  O come to us, abide with us.  Our Lord Emmanuel.  Amen.”