A heavy tray is extended towards you full of fluffy, golden brown cookies.
“Take one, please!” your host offers. “They’re Chocolate Chip Cookies, except they have no chocolate chips. We just don’t do those.”
Odd.
The outside of the bookstore is inviting and charming. Signs in the windows boast of new titles and the arrival of authors who will be in house soon. A lover of good books, you step inside, anticipating lingering over the newly bound pages and reading in a comfy chair. But your head jerks back and forth across the shelves that are…empty.
“You have no books?” you ask the clerk at the cash register.
“Oh, no. We just like having a store. We don’t do books.”
Bizarre.
A jolly clerk at the retail store had to wait to finish ringing up my purchase, because a price check was needed. The awkward wait was broken when he asked,
“Where will you spend Christmas this year?”
“Lexington, KY! How about you? came my response.
“Oh, I’ll stay right here.”
I continued the dialogue, “And how do you celebrate Christmas?”
“How? Oh, just with giving gifts – that’s all.”
My husband chimed into the conversation by asking, “Do you know the Christ of Christmas?”
“Oh, we usually don’t do the religious thing at Christmas” was his answer.
Don’t do the religious thing?
Me either. Rather, we Do Jesus. He is the reason we have Christmas! Without celebrating His coming to earth to die for my sins, there would be no Christmas, and certainly nothing to celebrate!
My first two scenarios in this post were totally fictional, but I use them to make a point. If you’re celebrating Christmas and leaving the worship of Christ out of your celebration, you have a far greater crisis than a chocolate chip cookie without chocolate chips or a bookstore without books! You have life without meaning. When the tinsel has lost its glow, the wrapping paper is stuffed into the trash can, the last cookie is eaten, and the final gift unwrapped, you are still left with that empty hole in your heart. The void in your life will still be unfulfilled on December 26th, because without Christ in Christmas you…
- have no meaning all the other 364 days of the year.
- don’t understand the sacrifice Jesus made to come to earth for you.
- have no hope for eternal life with God.
- have no peace in your heart.
- don’t understand true satisfaction and contentment.
- have just another party.
But if you will receive the greatest gift – the gift of eternal life THROUGH Jesus Christ, you can celebrate the joy of Christmas every day of the year.
If Christ is your Savior, I challenge you to make Him the center and focus of your celebrations this year. Without Him you’ll have just a plain ol’ holiday, but when you center everything around Him, you’ll have CHRISTmas!
Lovingly,
RefreshHer 