Every year our goal is to savor the season and make it truly special. I also tend to get a bit protective of the reason for the season. This year I came across this well written article and wanted to share it. I hope it blesses you! Merry Christmas!
***Oh for "advent to be made distinct from all the consumerism of the holidays and for the name of Christ to be invoked in the context of shocking of forgiveness, radical hospitality, and logic-defying love. The Incarnation survived the Roman Empire, not because it was common but because it was strange, not because it was forced on people but because it captivated people.
We lose our way around Christmas when we substitute abundance for giving, excess for the sufficiency of faith and family, our perfect plans for the messy and beautiful realities of our lives. We lose sight of the counter-cultural ways that Jesus entered and moved in this world when we demand that the surrounding culture recognize Christmas instead of expecting Christians to live as Jesus did. We fall into the trap of forgetting the significance of Jesus' humble, threatened birth even as we try to defend the most mundane expressions of the holidays.
After all, if we really followed Jesus as he walked on this earth, if we walked alongside the destitute and the homeless, if we were to see God in the broken and the lost, then all the tinsel, all the lights, all the wrapping paper, even the "war" on Christmas itself would suddenly lose their luster in comparison." Dr. Eric Barreto/Rachel Held Evans, Huffington Post
We lose our way around Christmas when we substitute abundance for giving, excess for the sufficiency of faith and family, our perfect plans for the messy and beautiful realities of our lives. We lose sight of the counter-cultural ways that Jesus entered and moved in this world when we demand that the surrounding culture recognize Christmas instead of expecting Christians to live as Jesus did. We fall into the trap of forgetting the significance of Jesus' humble, threatened birth even as we try to defend the most mundane expressions of the holidays.
After all, if we really followed Jesus as he walked on this earth, if we walked alongside the destitute and the homeless, if we were to see God in the broken and the lost, then all the tinsel, all the lights, all the wrapping paper, even the "war" on Christmas itself would suddenly lose their luster in comparison." Dr. Eric Barreto/Rachel Held Evans, Huffington Post
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