This week I innocently asked one of my customers if she was ready for Christmas.
She replied with, “I don’t celebrate. But I’m glad for a day off.”
So, it’s just Christmas she isn’t celebrating.
We are created for celebrations. Think of all the things we do during the holidays. There is the company Christmas party. How about that dinner with friends and family that tempts you to eat more than you’d normally eat all day in one meal. And don’t forget the frenzied shopping trips, the goal of which is to acquire expensive gifts to impress folks you rarely see so they will think you’re better than Santa himself.
And, of course, for most of us, there are those days off.
We’ve all got messes in our lives. We spend a lot of time hiding from them or avoiding them altogether. There are lots of ways we fashion fig leaves to cover our nakedness, if you will. Perhaps you opt for spiked eggnog to drown a blue Christmas. Maybe you are the free spender who lavishes the latest electronic gadgets on your nieces and nephews so they’ll love you till the batteries die. You might engage in a “one up” battle with your brother-in-law to mask your failures.
The problem is that when the party is over, you’re still depressed, in debt, and bent over with a stomachache.
Here’s something to celebrate. The God of the universe is giving the best gift you could ever want. He’s offering you a total pardon on your sin, that stuff in your life that has made you such a wreck, has led you to embrace failure as something you deserve, and urges you to drain that liquor bottle every weekend. He is freely giving you unshakeable confidence in a God that can fix everything the latest self-help book can’t. This God is sending you a solution that reaches down to the root of your emptiness and bitterness and replaces it with a joy unspeakable.
You can be right with the King of kings. You can be debt-free, loved, and cherished.
How do you get this gift? Simple. All you have to do is ask.
And you won’t have to pay for it all next year either.
This gift is Jesus. If you get this one, no other gift will ever measure up.
