“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
Merry Christmas!
I trust you had a wonderful Christmas.
When my children were young, my dad and I had an interesting conversation on Christmas evening. My dad grew up in Korea during the Korean War and through the hard times after the war. He tells stories of the times when he was so hungry he had to eat the bark and leaves off trees and even grass just to fill his stomach.
As he sat watching my kids and nieces open up present after present of toys on top of the many toys they already have and they don’t use, he just shook his head. When he was a child, if he received anything, he was so incredibly grateful because they had so little. But these kids, although they have so much they know little about gratitude and appreciating what they have.
And then dad said, that’s like America. We have been given so much and there is so much abundance, that America has lost the ability to be grateful for what we are given. So when it comes to the gift of Jesus, because we have so much, because we are so self-sufficient, we don’t appreciate God’s amazing gift. We don’t know how to be grateful. The tragedy of abundance is the inability to be grateful. Abundance numbs us to how spiritually bankrupt we are.
So we hear about the gift of Jesus – how he gave up heaven to come to us in the form of a child to be born in a manger – and we’re more concerned with what’s coming up on tv and what we’re going to eat for dinner than we are about thanking God for the amazing gift of sending his Son to sinners on Christmas day.
So friends, before another moment goes by, take a moment right now to reflect on the gift of Jesus and remember to thank God for the gift of eternal life.
Merry Christmas!
Praxis: Faith in Action 