It's ours this time and won't the children be surprised?! It's ours this time! Making Christmas, making Christmas, making Chriiiistmas!
(So I've been known to be mildly obsessed with Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" ... that doesn't make me a bad person! ... right?)
So I always get really excited for Christmas! I haven't as much this year, but as it is officially Christmas eve-eve (yes, you got that right), I hereby give myself and the rest of the holly jolly world permission to be excited about Christmas! I have two days left to revel in Christmas carols and twinkle lights and Santa's face being on EVERYTHING.
Come on, people! "It's CHRISTMASTIME!! Hee-hee-hee-hee!!"
I get to go to my first-ever Christmas Eve service tomorrow night at my "new" church (which I joined in September), and I'm excited! You know, I've heard the Baby Jesus story more times than I can count, but it always becomes so much more real to me when Christmas is put in perspective; that Jesus wasn't born to be "Sweet Little Baby Jesus" for all time, but to be the Messiah, who ended up DYING for us. Not only dying - if he were just another martyr, I wouldn't be a Christian. But he sacrificed the love of His Father for us. He was the only human being to ever experience the absence of God, and He IS God! I don't know if that means much to many people, but for me, just knowing that God is always with me - not just "watching over me", but is actually with me - helps even when I can't seem to feel Him there. I can't imagine the terror and chaos and pain that would befall me if God were to turn His face from me for even a moment. And God's own Son took THAT blow for me? Along with taking on mortal human nature and living life in a world full of temptation and living a sinless life through that temptation and being abandoned by His friends and distrusted and hated by the very people He created and then being humiliated, mocked, cursed, tortured and finally killed ... can you even begin to imagine the kind of pain that an eternal, perfect, omniscient God must have gone through every moment of every day seeing His beautiful world fallen and in ruins, and having to go through it all just like everyone else did? I try sometimes to imagine what horror must have been His as He went through His day-to-day life knowing that so many of the people he saw and reached out to were going to spend eternity without Him, and then His own personal struggles with the temptation to rebel against God.
... It brings me a deeper sense of peace knowing that Christmas isn't about the presents, or the lights, or the cute baby sitting in a manger. It's about a God - THE God - who suffered everything that a person can suffer and then some, because He loved His people so much. He did all that and saved me, too, just so I wouldn't have to live another day of my life without His love. :) It's amazing how easy it is to lose sight of that sometimes. But Christmas is a good time to remember.
And yes, I still like the Tim Burton movie. So sue me. :)
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Love,
Becca
P.S. I never believed in Santa. o:
No comments:
Post a Comment