I have often seen terrible things happen to people right at Christmas time. The loss of a job or a fatal car accident, or a sick family member. My heart has ached for them..."how hard it must be to find joy in Christmas when your world seems to be falling apart around you". I would think. I often wondered what could possibly be done to alleviate their suffering, what could I do to replace their sorrow with some Christmas cheer?
And now here I am, with a father battling cancer right in the middle of the Christmas season. Now I am faced with the challenge of finding some Christmas cheer while dealing with something so devastating.
Some neighbors brought over a nice card and some perfectly made Christmas treats. It was so nice to be thought of, yet these nice things did not contain true Christmas joy. We decorated the house and put up some lights, these too, while they were fun and brought a smile, did not contain the real Christmas spirit. Where could I find the true Christmas spirit?
One day as I was making my way through traffic and highways to the hospital I began to think about Christmas. I wondered if having my father in the hospital enduring so many physical pains would ruin my Christmas. How could it not?! How could I focus on the decorations and the lights and the wonder of the season with my heart so heavy? Each time I tried to focus on what gifts to get my kids or how nice our neighborhood looked with all the lights and decorations, my mind would always turn back to my father, laying in a hospital bed.
Then my mind wondered to the story of Christs birth. How hard it must have been for Mary! Riding a donkey while 9 months pregnant! The sorrow she must have felt as she watched Joseph get turned away at the Inn. I wondered if she cried. Then to be led to a barn!! I can see the picture in my minds eye, but I can not imagine how she felt. I thought of Christ, His birth, life and death. Only through Him can we over come the sorrows and heartache of this life. Wait...what....Only through Him! Not through presents and lights and shopping and decorated trees.
How could I let my father being in the hospital ruin Christmas? When Christmas is, in fact, in place to give hope over sorrow, pain, death, heartache, sin. Then I realized I was celebrating the wrong things. I had not been celebrating Christ. I had missed the whole purpose of Christmas!
To let such a devastating thing 'ruin Christmas' would indeed smack at the very meaning and purpose of Christmas. Because of this season there is hope for a better one. Through this Christmas season we gain a small glimpse of a better more exalted season.
Don't get me wrong, I've heard the cliche. Christmas is all about Christ, or giving, or thinking of others. While it is those things- do we let the American traditions, or even the ones of giving, take our focus of the savior? Do we truly remember and celebrate Him at Christmas? It is too easy to let concern over the tree and the gifts and the lights and the shopping, etc distract us from Christ.
And so its laid out before us, the challenge to truly focus on Christ. What traditions might need to be removed in order to prevent them from distracting us from Christ? What things need to change so that our time and our thoughts are freed up to allow Christ to fully become what Christmas really is all about?
