What if you bought
someone you loved a gift, the greatest gift they could ever dream of and they
came over Christmas Day and when you gave them the gift they said thank you and
then set it down and never opened it? Maybe they even took it home with them
but five, ten years later they had never opened it?
Christmas is about
gifts; we all know that. And behind the idea of giving gifts we say is the true
meaning of Christmas. Jesus is the reason for the season we cry. Say Merry
Christmas not Happy Holidays, we moan over and over to the world.
But the truth is to
those who never open the real gift of Christmas, which is the gift of salvation
that comes wrapped in the grace and mercy of God, there really is no Merry in
Christmas.
To celebrate the
birth of Christ in any way only to say Merry Christmas, it’s the best time of
the year, without surrendering your life to Him, is simply ignoring the truth.
Jesus came to save sinners; that is good news, but most are unwilling to agree
with Him in their own depravity.
Many will sing out
this Christmas a song that echoes what the Angels said upon His birth, “Peace
on earth, Good will to men! But that is not what the angels proclaimed. Hear
what the Word of God says, from Luke
2:14, "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men
with whom He is pleased." That peace is conditional.
We all know there is
no peace on earth. Not yet, though it will come when Christ returns. Jesus said
this Matthew 10:34, “Do not
think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring
peace, but a sword.” Jesus would go on in that scripture reading to explain the
cost of following Him. Those are whom He will bring a peace to as the angel
proclaimed that day. That peace is peace with God, the peace we need to be
restored into fellowship with our Holy God, which includes eternal peace in
Heaven. Paul reminds us in Romans 5:1 “since we have been justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. “ But that peace is only for
those who will not just look at the gift of the birth of Christ that we see in
the celebration of Christmas, but those who will actually open the gift.
Christmas will come
and go. All those “Merry Christmas’s” will mean nothing to most to whom we say
it. I am not saying we shouldn’t say Merry Christmas. I say let’s have a blast
with it all. But let’s not stop with Merry Christmas. Let’s find a way to get
people to open the real gift of Christmas; Christ Himself.
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