Coffee Break
"Christmas
Picture"
"And when they were come into the house, they saw
the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and
when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and
frankincense and myrrh." Matthew 2:11
I quit going to the annual Christmas parade a
couple of years ago because it's just too cold to be standing out there.
Well, last night I braved the cold because my daughter wanted to take my
granddaughter to her first parade, and of course, Nana couldn't miss it.
This morning I was reflecting on the night, and Christmas in general, and
began to think about the real meaning of Christmas---- CHRIST BIRTHDAY!
The more I thought about it, the more I found myself making some comparisons
between celebrating Christ and celebrating His birth. Let me
explain.
We will stand in freezing weather to watch a
Christmas parade, but we won't get out of our warm beds to go to our prayer
closet in our warm houses to spend a few minutes with the Lord. We will
fight the traffic jam afterwards just to get back home, but we won't get in our
cars on Sunday morning and go to church. We take our child to the mall and
stand in a line of screaming children for hours just to get a picture with Santa
Claus, but we can't sit in church for more than thirty minutes
without squirming and watching the clock. We will spend the money
that we don't have, borrow the money or max out credit cards to buy
Christmas presents that we don't need, but we won't give tithes and
offerings. We will get up in the middle of the night to be
the first in line at the store to buy that hard to find item, but we won't
get up even a few minutes earlier than we have to in order to have
time alone with the Lord. We go to great lengths to cover our houses with
lights, but we hide the light of Christ within us.
All that I have talked about are the things that we
associate with Christmas, but something is wrong with the picture.
There is something wrong when we give more attention, time and money to the
"trappings" of Christmas than we do to the One that Christmas is all
about. There is something wrong when we celebrate His birth but we don't
celebrate Him. I think we need to step back and individually make some
comparisons of our own lives during this time to see where we are putting the
emphasis... on Christ or on Christmas?
Have a great day. Are you celebrating
Christ? Or events?
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Coffee Break is a morning devotional written by Lorraine
Ezell
and is sent to you free of charge for the asking from
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