Brenda’s Blog – December 18, 2018
“What we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about us” A. W. Tozer
Each year the Christian community feels the tension between “Keep-Christ-In-Christmas” and the cacophony of holiday sounds. We try to walk the fine line between religious devotion and social emotion. This is not a harangue about Christians who celebrate a winter celebration. I give gifts to my family, but I also try to clarify my thinking, not allowing the person and work of God get pulled along in the stream of red and green.
As I look at our culture I see commercial syncretism. Seasonal greetings mesh into selling sprees. What should be our mindset and message? Who is the God of Christmas?
My younger grandsons spend hours playing with their LEGOs, the building blocks which entertain and now even create engineering solutions for physical therapy. TV ads promote these colorful bricks day after day as the perfect solution for grandchild satisfaction. “These will make happy faces on Christmas morning!”
I started thinking about what we think about when we think of God during this season. Shouldn’t our focus be on LOGOS? He became the building blocks for our salvation. Are we exchanging the true message of God’s becoming flesh – the Word incarnate LOGOS for the all-time favorite LEGOs?
Several years ago the desire to express the supremacy of Christ resulted in manger scenes with a jolly old Saint Nicholas bowing to the Christ child. The preeminence of the bearded, red and white attired character made me wonder. Is this the way we send the message of who Jesus is? Is this oversized storybook image towering over a tiny baby the rightful way to think about Bethlehem?
As we sing our songs are we replacing Hosanna! For Ho-Santa?
What we think about when we think about God truly is the most important thing about us. When we allow LEGOs to supersede the LOGOS and when our happy voices spend more time greeting each other with Ho-Ho-Ho, we are dimming our thinking. Recognizing the secular season is alright, but let’s not allow the time we allocate to the tinkle over the Trinity define how we spend these weeks.