There’s been a culture shift and it began long before my generation. Largely due to secularism, and the push to remove Christianity from every public square, strong advocates have successfully removed any resemblance at all of God from our culture…
…and it’s stolen Christmas.
OH, but it’s devastatingly stolen so much more! Removing Jesus from our culture removes the principles of love, as He defined them (laying down one’s life for another). It removes peace, because Jesus is the Prince of Peace. It creates an unsettled people who don’t know why deep satisfaction cannot be found, the kind when you lay your head on the pillow at night there is true rest knowing that your redemption has been paid. When we have so much, why aren’t we happy we wonder, if we’re honest. It has brought a belief system that we are on this earth simply by random chance and removes PURPOSE from the human soul. It promotes the self-life when Jesus taught the way to save your life is to lose it. We are medicated, when our need is spiritual. Suicide is contemplated, and for some, wins the fight. We are led to believe that our mental and emotional struggles can and should be healed through philosophies of academia, rather than the healer Himself. The highest authority in our land has become the human mind, not the God who created the human mind.
We were made for more.
I will say it again… the rejection of Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, has STOLEN Christmas and every wonderful, satisfying thing that comes with it. It’s been to our complete destruction as a society. It’s stolen what it means to have true, deep, lasting JOY. It has taken away a season to reflect on a God who wants YOU and ME to have a relationship with Him and it robs the celebration of the glorious great lengths He went to achieve it. It’s stolen the song that the heart can SING, even in hardship. It has stolen the LIFTED HEAD of the one who realizes that the sorrows of this life pale in comparison to the glory we have in what is to come. It has stolen HOPE that this life isn’t the end.
God proved He can be trusted by coming to earth at Christmas…
On that beautiful first Christmas, God became flesh. He dwelt among the people He created. He cried, a baby’s cry. He lived the same difficult life we live. He knew pain, He knew sorrow. He was aquatinted with grief, the same kind you and I know. He died a death we deserve, in order to give us LIFE (abundant and eternal). He became Emmanuel, God with us.
Although stolen from the culture, Christmas does not have to be stolen any longer!! HALLELUJAH! It is in the quietness of the heart that Christmas is fully known, fully realized, and fully celebrated.
Christmas is found, when a lonely soul that has been unable to find rest, humbly bows their knee to the God who gave up heaven to live on earth – Jesus. He is God. He’s there. Always. “This is my Son, hear Him,” God thundered from the mountaintop. “This is my Son, hear Him,” God whispers to the human heart.
Christmas is calling through the voice of the One that Christmas is all about. Jesus. Can you hear Him? He said:
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:28-29
To hear Him, you must listen. To find rest for your soul, you must simply come to Him. He’s just a prayer away.
Christmas will not be stolen from me! I will REJOICE. I celebrate Jesus, the Christ, with a future HOPE in all He’s promised. I am beyond thankful for PEACE and my soul knows REST. I am FULL.
I hope you will not allow Christmas to be stolen from you either.
And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger. Luke 2:12-16 NKJV
Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill to men! Wishing you the merriest of all Christmases!!
