Missing Some One at Christmas?

I’ve always seen it in my head; strolling down the lighted path, talking, laughing, playing games with family at a time when people gasp for breathe, traffic stops stagnant, and people wish frantically for “just a little more time” to finish what needs to be done, for Christmas.

Each year, my intentions were clear, opinions sometimes crass on how I will just “give up” on Christmas, or revolt against materialism all together, to make my claim that Christ is the center…not presents, or chaos, or rat races going nowhere.

Still, I missed it. 

Year after year.  Me, failing to simplify, failing to grab a hold of the BIG picture….that Christ came like a babe in a manger.  And our hope isn’t found in wrappings, or some Santa painted gleefully.

I hear him command the waiter in the next booth.  “I want this.  I want that”, changing an otherwise happy server into a miserable servant of some people who either had a bad day, or just like the “lord-persona” ..that comes with telling other people what to do.

I scratched my tip, doubled, pause….and tripled it.

Because buying helps no one if we first haven’t learned the lesson of blessing, giving, and sacrificially responding to the prompting that whispers to do above and beyond what our mind might not be capable to understand.

We circled the parking lot first.  So much to buy.  Seeing crabby faces, crossing in front of cars, risking their lives to get “the perfect present”.  And I think about my friend who just lost a parent, the young family who recently lost a child.  The friend divorced recently, the baby I have back home who has been taken away from her mama because she just can’t get her stuff together….

And as I circled this carousel for what seemed like a thousandth times. Presents seem even smaller, even more insignificant with each and every lap, looking for a parking place.  Until my eight-year-old rises on my priority list.  My car turns to freedom. We ditch the shopping mall and stop at the Olive Garden instead.

And sometimes, I think we want to radicalize our lives.  We dream big, even fanaticism of a life….a Christmas….having this or not having that.  But, what God has been teaching me this holiday is that it’s not about the big steps, but about all those little choices that help us to step back, and see what’s really important, make us question why we ever caved to the pressure in the first place. 

You know, the “Will I spend time with this person?” “Will I surrender my weekend to serve someone else”, “Will I offer over my life as a drink offering, so that Jesus is seen in a world looking for happiness in empty pursuits and stuff?”

And each time we say, “no” to the world.  Each time we choose sitting with family, listening, or embracing the most important things around us….the glamorization of a Christmas that seems to drown out the baby in a manger grows smaller and somehow even more insignificant.  And He rises….in the silent of our lives, in the laying down the hype, and choosing people aver some plastic presentations or present that will soon be recycled.

He is fourteen.  I see Him standing in front of a grocery store.  My two young girls fill his box for foster care donations.  We spend the morning shopping for needy children because I am tired of giving presents to those disregard or don’t appreciate them.

We laugh around the oven, amongst Hershey kisses, flour powdering our noses, and the aroma of hot Christmas cookies coming from the oven. And although love can’t be baked, the time we spend savoring the real meaning of Christmas can be shared, and no one, yes no one can take those memories from us….

Love is present that can’t be bought or redeemed for the next “big” thing.

And it is then we find that we don’t miss the things we think we cared about.  When we give and bless, and offer all we are to the lives of those around us…suddenly we wake to a simpler Christmas, a life slayed from stress, and moments get exchanged for holding hands, time shared, and laughter and dancing to the Christmas Carols you once knew as a child…

And instead of missing those loved ones far away, grieving for our losses, wishing our year had been even better that it had been…our hearts start to replace remorse-fullness for gratitude instead.  Thanking God for the good, for the beauty, for the simply things He’s given…

Like waiters that press on, keep smiling even when people can be mean to them, or fourteen-year-old boys who aren’t playing video games…but collecting donations for foster kids instead.  You start to see beauty when you ditch the angry mall and sit down to dinner with those who love, holding tighter the ones in your world, the ones God has blessed you with, making life brighter in ways that haven’t seen before.

And that’s when our silent night, holy night finds us.  There in looking out, grabbing a hold of others, loving despite how others might treat us.

And I don’t know if you are reading this all alone this Christmas.  I don’t know if you have left all you know and are starting over, or people you care about have passed or have disappeared and you just can’t go on.  I don’t know if you are hurting from the choices of a friend or co-worker, or suffering from some deliberating disease….

But I promise, God has better than what this Christmas might be missing.  So I question….

• Will you tare down the walls and ask God to give you His peace in a time where it seems harder to find it than ever?
• Will you beg Him to give you His perspective on life, and friends, and family….and to show you the difference between real wants and needs?
• Will you ask for the ability to look at life through His eyes, versus this world that cries, “Get more stuff”, or “It’s what you have that makes you happy”?
• Will you beckon him to awaken you to the beauty that lies hidden in the ashes, the hope that despite the hurt still lurks even if you can’t see it?

Because often we miss Christmas, in all our running, and chasing the dangling carrot that is commercialism and materialism….we miss the Christ who died.  The baby born so that we might have new life.  So let’s make the small choices that bring us life.  Let’s start spending time with Emmanuel who is, “God with us”, the hope and promise of a new life…

He sits.  Asking you to abide in Him.  Will we see the star.  Bring our presents.  Bend a knee to the Christ-King in a manger?  Or will we chase some superficial Christmas?  Not looking up.  Missing the star of Bethlehem.  Tripping over presents, but missing the present that is the best gift already given….Jesus.  Still.  Quiet.  Born in a manger….

Waiting that we might stop seeking the things we think we are missing in this season of excess….and finding the only thing that matters.  People.  People, and a Risen Savior.  Alive and well in those unwrapped gifts…and often times in the least likely….of places we might think to look.

Have you found the Prince of Peace that truly is Christmas?