Joy at Christmas? You must be CRA CRA!

 With just 13 days until Christmas, the push is at a dead run for the gifts and decorations to be finished and wrapped. The problem for us “task oriented people” is that causes us to focus on the task and not the time. So, Joy is not part of our vocabulary. It is probably far for our head and heart truth be told. Joy has been hijacked because you have run out of money before your list ran out or because this will be the first Christmas without that special someone with you. Might be due to school, or job or the hardest of all death, they just will not be with you and so you are thinking it can’t be Christmas.

When Barbara and I moved to Louisville, KY for me to go to seminary, Christmas was just days away and Barbara was not going to have Christmas. We could not afford to be off from work to go home (retail). So, Christmas was not going to happen because of what we could NOT do. Christmas Eve I came home from Lowe’s where I worked with a tree crammed in the hatchback of my MGB-GT, carried it upstairs to our 4 room apartment in a shotgun house and said, “Barbara its Christmas.” We decorated that tree and enjoyed that time. I/We chose Joy. Joy is a choice not an emotion of feeling. It is a willful decision. We can chose to wallow in resentment, anger and fear or we can chose to pursue the Joy of Christ at Christmas.

Matt Tullos (currently with Louisiana Baptist Convention) put together an advent devotional reading in 2011 on Joy. The following are his key points.

·         Joy is trusting when you want to doubt. That was the key to the shepherd’s response to the angel’s announcement. They said, “hey let’s go check out what he said.” It is that simple child-like faith that takes the shot and decides that no matter what Jesus has got our back and side and…well…all of us.

·         Joy is receiving what you want to reject. I enjoy finding gifts my family likes. It is much more delightful to watch them open a gift that is unexpected and wonderful. It is much better than anything I am given. We need to be open to the gifts of others fore to reject them is to deny them the blessing of giving. Giving is the only fitting response to God’s gift of himself, Jesus.

·         Joy is celebrating when you want to fear. The first things angels say to us humans is…”Fear NOT.” They must be scary to experience. The REAL scary is in what they are there to say. UNWED Mary hears she is going to have a baby (not her fiancé’s) Hum that’s a lot to be afraid of and yet she says OK whatever you say. Now that’s crazy! That whole Christmas adventure was not a Peanut’s Christmas play but REAL, SCARY LIFE.

The joy of Christmas is God showed up and “moved into the neighborhood,” Eugene Peterson says. He knows it is crazy scary. That’s why he came to be with us “Immanuel.”

 

That’s the GOOD NEWS the GREAT JOY.

 

That’s CRA CRA!  

In HIS Service and yours,

Bro G
(P.S. I use Cra Cra to mess with you! It’s Christmas!)