Oh the Holidays!

Ohhhh the holidays! Where time moves at WARPED speed and there never seems to be enough hours in the day. Add some crazy jetlag and a wicked cold and each day gets that much shorter. It gets harder to find the quiet time you need: Peaceful time with your Heavenly Father and slowing down to "smell the roses." It's easy for this season to be corrupted into something it was never meant to be. A time of closeness, love, joy, and thankfulness can easily be skewed into greed, discontentment, anger, and dissatisfaction. 

Think about it: This season is all about thanking God for sending his only Son, Jesus, to this earth to save us. What's even more fantastic is that God knew all along what he was doing when He sent His son as a baby born into poverty, laid in a mucky manger, and greeted by barn animals and shepards (who, in those days were crazy loners). He was wrapped in dirty clothes and was completely defenceless. Our glorious savior was placed in the most unlikely of situations so that no one could say, "God just couldn't understand what I'm going through." He knows. He lived it. That is the reason for the season: God so loved us that he gave us his only Son to be the savior of the whole world.

This is the kind of wonder I've been in constantly while in Thailand. Each child in the slums, each prostitute in the bar, each orphan, every human being there (and everywhere) is brilliantly and wonderfully loved by the great Creator of the universe.  There, it seems that the love is so much more tangible because so many have never felt real love before. As soon as you tell them how Jesus loves them, you can see it in their eyes that they have never known that kind of love and care.

I challenge everyone to try to imagine how tangible the Father's love is for His children this season. The same love is available and abundant all year round, but I challenge you to recognize it in THIS season where it's so easy to be distracted by basically everything else.

Here is the online Christmas service from my church (Overlake Christian Church). It's super short and talks a lot on what I have just discussed. Enjoy!


Home for Christmas from Overlake Christian Church on Vimeo.