Getting it Right or Loving Fully?

And here comes the holidays season again...a fun and meaningful time. Yet it can also be a stressful time for many people. For folks who have trouble making financial ends meet, the constant December advertising demand to "buy, buy, buy," accentuates what they will NOT be able to do on Christmas morning. For people going through life pains, such as loss, death of a loved one, divorce, critical illness, or terminal illness, the constant pressure to "be merry" just adds guilt to already broken hearts.

But what of us who are not facing these things, but still make the month of December the most pressured, stressful month of the year? In part I think it is because we are so driven to get the holidays right - to have the right parties, to put up the right decorations, to send cards or e-greetings to the right people, to make the right meals, to have the right family gatherings, to observe the right traditions, etc. etc.

There's nothing wrong with "getting it right." There's everything right with it. The problem comes when "getting it right" becomes the goal instead of the means. The object of Christmas isn't to "get it right." There's no "getting it right" at Christmas on our part. God already got it right, becoming one of us in a baby born to a poor couple out on the road. "Getting it right" in the last month of the year or at any time of the year is not about our endless Christmas season "to-do" lists. It's in people seeing the Bethlehem baby so alive and at work in us that they also know that this same God loves them to. Everything else either supports this aim or works against it.

Not an easy thing in this busy, pressured time of the year. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.