Christmas will look much different for most of us this year for many different reasons. Many families won’t be getting together as they have in the past. We may have lost a love one this past year and gone through and are still going through, what I all “deep grief.” Everything changes when that happens.
It may be hard for many of us to get into what is called “the Christmas spirit.” It is a reminder though that Christmas is not about us and it’s not about this earthly home. It does seem to point out more than ever why Jesus needed to come as a baby in that smelly stable on that Christmas day.
I for one am very thankful this is not my permanent home. And that this is not my permanent body. We are promised so much more. Believers over the centuries have longed for Christ’s second coming.
My favorite Christmas song that I’ve shared in an earlier blog, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” has been sung by Christians for over 1200 years. Believers that lived through the depression, World War I, World War II and many personal tragedies. It’s a song that speaks of a longing for Christ’s second coming.
I am right there with them, and it’s OK.
Maybe it’s the Christmas spirit that we should have this year. Maybe this year more than ever we can focus on the real meaning of Christmas and why Jesus came. We needed saving, not from an outside enemy as much as from the one inside each of us. Jesus didn’t come to be born in a stable as a sacrificial lamb that was to die, once and for all for our sins so that we could have a perfect life here, but so we could have eternal life forever.
John 1:12 says, “But as many as received him to them he gave the power to become children of God.” And 1 John 5:13 says, “Whoever has the son has life, whoever does not have the son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”
If we have Christ we have the promise of this eternal life. Now that’s something to celebrate. Have a blessed Christmas.
– Pat Estes