Wesley United Methodist Church, Orange TX

Pastor John Jewell tells about a young boy a few years ago who at one of their Christmas Eve candlelight services expressed his excitement. Immediately after the benediction, this four year old broke out at the top of his lungs with, “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Jesus is born! Jesus is born! Let’s get going!”

It seems the boy’s parents had told the lad that he could not open his gifts until after the church service. Waiting was difficult for him, so just as soon as the service was over, he was thrilled that he could get on to the things that mattered most to him. (2) That lad didn’t understand the true meaning of Christmas, but he certainly caught its excitement. “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Jesus is born! Jesus is born! Let’s get going!”

So what do we do to generate excitement in our own lives around Christmas.  You know that some of us will get depressed this Christmas because there might not be enough money to buy the presents we want to give to those we love.  There will be some in our community who will go out and steal so that they can give others presents.  There will be some who will be angry or depressed over lost loved ones during this time of year.  There will be some who will go out and spend more than they have (plastic money) so that they can give to those they love or want to impress or perhaps are afraid of someone else being loved more. I have listed just a few of the many negative circumstances/emotions  people  will experience during this time of year and I am sure that this is not what Jesus would be encouraging us to do.  So how do we deal with our own good or bad, negative or positive attitudes toward Christmas and how we build expectations and excitement during Advent.

First of all we need to think about what Christmas is all about.  It is meant to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus and Advent (derived from the Latin word Adventus which means “coming”)  is about building excitement towards the day we celebrate His birth.  First of all keeping our God and Jesus involved in our Advent is important.  How about as we are thinking about what we will give we include God in our thoughts.  We could pray for the person we want to give a gift to.  We could pray about the gift we should give. We could pray over the gift God helps us choose.  We could pray each day that our excitement would grow because we are truly thankful that whatever our gifts to others may be, we know that God really does bless those gifts and the person they are given to when we include Him in the process. So much effort is going to remove Christ from our celebration that it is very important to let everyone know the reason we celebrate the season and that our celebration gives all glory and honor to our God and His Son, Jesus the Christ.  Amen

Pastor Randy