Christmas has become a secular holiday instead of a religious and deeply felt HOLY DAY.
And the fault lies within ourselves.
We are seduced by the twinkling of lights and sparkling of metallic papers and our gaze has dropped to things terrestrial instead of finding the wonder of the Christ in that star so bright that heralded His Birth.
The shepherds received a startling message. They, among some of the most humble professions on the planet, sat out in the dark and watched over the helpless sheep with their very lives. How fitting that they were the recipients of the most powerful revealed truth which came to the world that night!
The good news - the gospel - the angelic messenger brought an announcement that has rippled through time and will continue to spread forever - Jesus Christ is come to the earth!
They dropped what they were doing, important as it was, and came with all due haste to the humble manger - a place of animal habitation where the lowly and the Almighty met in the most meager of circumstance. There, before their very eyes was Salvation come!
We do not know the rest of their story, as each shepherd took and spread that news. They published it abroad in the land, but we have no idea if others of their lowly station came also to see THEIR King. I hope so.
We know that angel choirs sang exulting the joy and happiness of the birth of the Messiah, who would be born in a manger, but grow to The Son of Man who would pay the terrible but necessary price in His precious blood for us to all be redeemed, if we will but choose to follow Him.
Later, Wise Men came from the East to bring the gifts that are synonymous with wealth - gold, frankincense and myrrh. They traveled far with the brilliant star to guide them to the place where the young child now lived. No journey from so far and so possibly frought with peril would happen in a short time. These Wise Men traveled from distant lands to seek audience and consultation with another king of mortal fame.
Being warned by the Holy Spirit that evil was in this mortal man so steeped in sin, the Wise Men did not return to him after presenting their life-saving gifts to the King of Kings. Instead, they returned to their own countries in other ways leaving the ruler of a tiny kingdom to fail in his misguided attempt to assasinate the Son of God.
Our celebrations of the birth of the Savior are a good beginning. But without the rest of His life and His selfless Atonement performed for each of us out of Love Divine, all we have is a baby being born in a rude stable on a crowded highway during the Roman Census.
How much of what we celebrate is man-made joy and how much comes from God above? Is my own heart filled with gratitude for all that I have been granted or am I merely content to take it all and hold out my greedy hands for more?
Would I have been as willing to leave my own personal flocks and come into the city at the invitation of the angelic messenger? Do I hear him even now as he beckons me to drop the world in favor of the Kingdom of the Most High? Or is the bleating noise of the world, the glitter of a falling kingdom and the false promises of that which cannot save grating in my ears preventing me from hearing about the Good News that even now can save, redeem and exalt?
Would I be wise enough to travel any distance and perform any service necessary to make myself able to give my gifts - indeed, my ALL - at the feet of Him who has come to save me, if only I will come unto him with the gifts He seeks the most: a broken heart and a contrite spirit?
I hope and pray that this time around, my ears will be far more in tune, that my heart may be more tender and that my soul will be attuned to those angelic strains that still reach out to each of us to bring us from the manger to the foot of the cross and to the very Throne of God.
Merry CHRISTmas. For without Christ and His continuing ministry to rescue the lost and wayward sheep of HIS fold, there is nothing to be merry about at all.
