It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

               I read this week a question posed on Facebook regarding Christmas. The question was, what makes Christmas for you or something to that effect. In other words what helps you move to the spirit of Christmas? It’s a good question. We are to our detriment people motivated by our environment. This time of year the sights, sounds and smells are a huge motivator.

In my family we have a cookie recipe that we only make at Christmas. The recipe calls for the dough to be mixed and to sit 3 days to 3 weeks in a covered bowl before baking. It makes a dark gingerbread like cookie that is topped with a pecan half and a glaze. I think they are delicious just by the smell in the bowl. By the way we have a bowl in our kitchen just waiting to be baked and consumed. Maybe it is the smell of sugar in the house as candy is made and piles up on the counter plate by delicious plate. The season of Christmas has a lot to do with food. Well at least with me and my house.

Christmas is not the same without sound. This week I hurt my knee requiring a trip to the orthopedist. This was my first time seeing this doctor. As the conversation went he said he loved the Christmas season because of the music. Everyone in his family is musical except him but he loves music and the abundance of music at Christmas from orchestra to children’s choirs. Bells ring and people sing even folks who would never sing any other time sing a little at Christmas. Sacred or secular it doesn’t matter at Christmas people like the sounds of the season.

The sight of lights is what sets me in the season. Since I was a small boy I have loved looking at the lights of Christmas. We would get in the car and drive through neighborhoods to see the lights and comment on how beautiful each home was. Thursday night I was coming south through Guyton when I was struck by a light display. There on Central Avenue was a home brightly lit with a cross, nativity and other colors of the rainbow all in lights. I was dazzled. I have decided to go back Friday night to get some pictures it is that good.

Sights, sounds and smells are powerful motivators of this season but they are external. The real motivator of the season is Jesus. He is an internal kind of guy. He is transforming us form the inside out. It is his light that needs to shine not into but out of us every season of the year. Yet all too often for me his light is shrouded by other external factors. It is sad that I have to be coerced into the Christmas spirit. Why is Christ in me not enough? Why is his grace alone insufficient for me to shout “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased?”

I’m not sure I know the answer but I am taking it all in to prepare me once again this year for Christmas.

What about you?

How are you preparing for Christ this Christmas?

It is Advent! The season of preparation!

              

In HIS Service and Yours.

BroG