Season of Preparation Day Seven: God’s Values

Ask just about anyone to describe their ideal Christmas and most of the answers you’ll hear will be about the decorations, the gatherings, the gifts, or the food.

But what if the most ideal Christmas that could ever be imagined and planned has already happened?

To quote a line from Dr. Suess’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, “It came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags.”

The night Jesus was born—the first Christmas—was anything but picture perfect. And yet it was holy perfection.

Maybe what God wants most for us is not the elaborate Christmas holidays we’ve created for . . . let’s be honest . . .  for ourselves. Maybe he wants us think on the humble beginning of a newborn baby in a dark and dirty stable.

The contrast between our expectations for what Christmas should look like and what God thought it should be is convicting.

What God had in mind was much bigger and much more important than ribbons, tags, boxes, and bags. His purpose was our rescue.

I have toddler grandsons and taking them to the toy aisle at the store is an exercise in patience . . .  and sometimes public humiliation. Getting them to leave, even when we try to explain something better is coming, is a work of epic proportions.

Are we this way with God? When he tries to call us out of our “toy aisle”, do we kick and scream and cling to our treasure, stubbornly refusing to let go? In these moments we reveal our true heart. We don’t trust God.

We don’t believe what he wants for us is better than anything we could imagine for ourselves.

Maybe I need to face the hard truth that what I value often doesn’t line up with what God values.

He didn’t send his Son to earth to make me comfortable, wealthy, famous. And he certainly didn’t send Jesus so I’d have a reason to decorate a Christmas tree and overindulge in sweets.

It’s true that Jesus came to earth to die for us. But he also came to live for us. By the one I’ve been saved from death and by the other I’ve been given an example of how I should live.

Perhaps this Christmas the gift I give myself is to go back to that first night long ago and gaze upon a baby lying in a manger. That is the place to begin re-learning –or learning for the first time—what God values most.