Once again during this Christmas season, we have read many articles and watched TV Christmas specials decrying the commercial nature of Christmas and trying to determine what is the real meaning of Christmas. This morning in Norway, in the Christmas Day worship service in the Kragerø United Methodist Church, the pastor, Harald Olsen, made an interesting comment about that icon of Christmas materialism, Santa Claus. Everyone knows what Santa is about. He has a twice checked list of all the Nice and Naughty Children, bringing gifts to the Nice Children and a lump of coal in the stocking for the Naughty Ones. Doesn’t that make perfect sense? Shouldn’t only the deserving be eligible to be on Santa’s list for a gift?
But that is the exact opposite attitude God has in gift giving on Christmas: God’s gift, Jesus, is expressly for all the Naughty Boys and Girls, to give us the opportunity to reconcile ourselves with God and the world around us through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. No one is so naughty, so poor, so lost, so unworthy, so sinful to be ineligible for God’s Christmas list. God seeks us all and rejoicing is heard throughout heaven when anyone of us takes the Gift.
Merry Christmas! And may you be an instrument of delivering God's Gift to the world.
0 comments:
Post a Comment