A Christmas Journey You May Not Have Considered

journey

The Christmas season is notorious for traffic and travel. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, many people will travel great distances to celebrate with loved ones. The highways will be clogged with travellers, any of which will NOT be exhibiting the joy of the season. Hopefully for you, all of the going will be worthwhile as it results in great times with your loved ones. I know that will be the case for us.

The first Christmas was noted for its travellers as well. Mary and Joseph travelled about 80 miles in a journey that probably took them anywhere from a week to 10 days; a journey made even more complicated when traversed with and by a pregnant young woman. Magi travelled from the East – probably somewhere in the Persian Empire – to pay homage to a newborn King. Even shepherds temporarily went AWOL and travelled into nearby Bethlehem to confirm the news delivered to them by angels who had travelled from heaven.

Your Christmas Journey

The advent of the Giver of Life set many to travelling literally, but metaphorically, once He gives us life, the travelling has just begun. This life He gives us is quite a journey! We should all be travelling spiritually – moving closer to Him each day. God has called us to Himself so He can transform us into the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29), and that transformation can be understood in terms of a journey. Once God begins a work in our life, He promises to FINISH it (Philippians 1:6)

Where are you in your spiritual journey? Have you begun to walk with Jesus? If not, the reason He came was to die for your sins so you could be forgiven and have a relationship with God. You can learn more about that by following this link to The Story.

Are you learning more and growing closer to the Lord each day or have you stalled along the way in your spiritual journey? Have you detoured or even taken a few steps backwards? Just as every trip needs a route plan, so also we need an intentional plan to grow.

This Christmas begin or resume your spiritual journey by intentionally and regularly studying God’s Word and praying.   Make an intentional effort EACH DAY to move a little closer to the Lord. You can find some helpful hints by clicking here. Next year, may Christmas of 2023 find you so much closer to the Lord than you are this year.

Intentionally Keep One Christmas Decoration Out

intentionally

Christmas is over and the un-decorating now begins, making room for all of the new gifts we received for Christmas. How do we repack the ornaments? Where we store the lights? And what we do with the nativity scene? As you put the decorations away, let me challenge you to intentionally leave one of the items on display. 

When you pack your nativity scene and safely secure Mary, Joseph, and the manger, don’t put Jesus in the box.  At least metaphorically, keep Jesus unpacked throughout the year.

Often, we denounce our culture for “taking Christ out of Christmas.” But do we conveniently leave Christ out of our lives when it seems beneficial to do so? We stand firmly against those who have “taken prayer out of our schools.” But we do regularly pray with our children or pray privately in our prayer closets? We lament culture’s attempts to remove the Bible from public life. But do our Bibles gather dust on our end tables and shelves in our homes?

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Why Jesus Is Better than Santa Claus

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used by permission www.pexels.com

I know a lot of people who are struggling in many ways during this Christmas season.  Several are experiencing their first Christmas without a loved one.  Others struggle under the burden of a busier than normal schedule.  There is the pressure of attending special events, juggling the demand to visit pockets of family scattered here and yon.  We stress over selecting the perfect Santa gift for each person on a bottomless Christmas list. Moreover, we struggle to find creative ways to stretch an already overextended budget.

Through the “Santa Claus” ritual, we expose our children to the pressure of behaving to please a fictional character.  Why would we call a man a saint who would stalk little children? After all, he meticulously keeps and checks a list of every good and bad deed and thought they have? We pressure ourselves to conform to others’ demands on our time and finances.

Better Than Santa

I know I sound a little like the second coming of Ebenezer Scrooge. However, let me remind you that Christmas was never intended to be about demands on us.  Christmas is not about us at all, it is about Jesus.  It is not about what we do, but a reminder of what He has done.  Christmas is not about performance, it is about GRACE.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.   John 1:14, 16

Do not judge this Christmas by your ability to meet someone else’s demands. Also do not grade your Christmas by your success at making someone else happy.  Judge this Christmas . . . and EVERY DAY . . . by the price tag God places on you.  To Him, you are worth Him sending His Son to die for you. From Him we receive not just a “little dab” of grace, but we receive grace upon grace…stacked up…piled high…sufficient grace, and then some.  Click this link to see how you can experience this kind of grace.

This Christmas remember that YOU are the Son of God’s gift to His Heavenly Father.

I Am NOT Thankful for the Early Christmas

early Christmas
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Seems like “Christmas” starts earlier every year.

I have seen more pre-Thanksgiving Christmas decorations and sales displays this year than ever before.  I even have neighbors who already have decorations out.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not a Scrooge.  I LOVE Christmas, but I also love Thanksgiving. This infringement on Thanksgiving concerns me.  It seems we are more interested in getting more stuff than being thankful for the stuff we already have.

How seriously does God take thankfulness?  Romans 1:18-32 provides a list of attitudes and actions that reveal hearts who’ve rejected God.  There in the middle of the list we find this description (emphasis added):

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. – Romans 1:21-23

Sounds pretty serious to me.

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Three Ways to Give Thanks

Let me encourage you to hold your horses on Christmas for 4 more days and spend this week in Thanksgiving.  In fact, I challenge you to give thanks THREE WAYS this week.

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Then? There? Them? – A Lesson in Christmas Abnormalties

Why then? The timing seemed odd, after all, since Augustus ruled most of the known world with an iron fist. Why did Mary and Joseph have to travel when she was pregnant? Couldn’t this have waited a few months?

Why there? Bethlehem…seriously? A Podunk town that no one outside of the “house and lineage” of David even knew existed. Wouldn’t a metropolitan area, a crossroads of culture like Jerusalem have been a much more appropriate and effective setting? And a manger? The King of Kings was coming to earth not in a palace but in a slobbery feed trough?

Why them? Joseph? He was a mere blue-collar, calloused carpenter. Why would God choose to use him in such a plan? And Mary? Such a young girl that no one would notice her, or even believe her story. Shepherds? The lowest of the low. Foul-mouthed. Dirty. Smelly. Ostracized. In many cases, criminal. They were the first to hear the good news?

If there is one truth demonstrated in the Christmas story, it is the sovereignty of God. He knew what He was doing, through whom He was doing, and where it was all taking place. In fact, in Galatians 4:4 Paul refers to God’s timing in bringing Jesus into the world as “the fullness of time.” When the chronology was just right, when earth’s clock hit the exactly perfect beat, with impeccable timing God acted with a perfect when, where, and whom.

Augustus thought he was in charged when he called for the tax registration, but God was using him to bring Mary and Joseph to the little town the prophet had indicated years before would bring forth the Messiah. Bethlehem was the perfect setting, a town too small to handle the large crowd who would come so that the Jesus would lay in a manger, making Him easily identifiable to short-witted shepherds who may not have found Him otherwise. Speaking of shepherds, can you think of a group who needed more to hear a message of hope than they? They were the perfect testimony to the redeeming work God was doing through His Son.

Yes, God was sovereignly at work in the when, where, and whom that first Christmas night. The Christmas story also reminds me that God is sovereignly at work in the whens, wheres, and whoms, of my life. I do not experience accidental circumstances, blind luck, or strange coincidences.

My life is part of a bigger story. God is working His plan for His creation. This is all HIS stage, I am just a small part and He will accomplish what He has begun in me. Friend, if things aren’t going the way you think they should in your life, remember that our all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful God will never fail in His purposes. In the fullness of time for you, He will come through and make His glory known. Celebrate the Sovereign Lord this Christmas season.

Joseph Did You Know?

We can only speculate precisely what was going through Joseph’s mind when he heard the news that his fiancé Mary was pregnant.

      • How could this happen?
      • What will people say?
      • What should I do?
      • I love her so much, why did she do this?

He came to a very compassionate decision .

And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. Matthew 1:19

He wanted to do both the right and compassionate thing, so he decided to absolve the engagement, but to attempt to do so in a way that would cause her the least amount of embarrassment and shame.  He had every right to divorce her publicly, thereby exonerating himself at the expense of her reputation, but he CHOSE not to exercise that right and to handle the matter quietly and discreetly.

We know the rest of the story.  Gabriel appeared to him and explained God’s plan to him.  I am sure even that message was hard to grasp, but it gave him a glimmer of hope and rewarded his willingness to exercise meekness and compassion.

His compassionate treatment of Mary leads me to a further thought, however.  What would have become of Mary in today’s church culture?  Would anyone have believed her story?  I must admit that I would probably find it incredible and would assume she had fabricated the entire tale.

Let’s admit it though, we are quick to judge others aren’t we?  We assume that we KNOW why they are in their circumstances and why they act in what SEEMS to us an unacceptable manner.  But… we DON’T KNOW.

I think one of the most profound lessons I have learned in my life is that we never know what load another person may be carrying.  We may think we know what is going on in their lives, but we don’t.  We don’t know what they are thinking, feeling, or experiencing.  We just don’t.  And we are arrogant to believe that we can stand judgment on them without knowing the facts…KNOWING not HEARING…the FACTS not the GOSSIP.

So this Christmas, let me challenge you as I challenge myself to try and be more compassionate and merciful toward others.  If we KNOW of sin in their lives, then we should address it WITH THEM.  If we truly do not KNOW then we should cut them some slack.

Imagine what Joseph would’ve missed had he given up on Mary.  WOW!  Only heaven knows what we miss when we give up on others too soon.