Christmas

Music for this week: anything by Leeland. "Opposite Way" is my favorite of their three albums, but "Love Is On The Move" and "Sound of Melodies" are both legit too.

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(Thanks to Seth Placke for the starting thought of this post)

Thought #1: "Remember the reason for the season". A lot of people say this around this time of year. Keep this in back of your head.

Thought #2: He who gets the most toys wins, right? Ok cool. That's what I thought...
In that case, get me a plane ticket to NYC and I'm going here:

Problem is, that thing about "He who has the most toys wins" isn't true.

You see, we as humans are inherently sinful, and this sin basically means that we as humans are doomed to spend eternity (after our temporal, earthly bodies die) in Hell, aka The Lake of Fire, aka you don't want to be there, like, ever. This instead of spending eternity in Heaven with God, which is basically gonna be the best place ever. However, because of God's love and mercy towards us, he sent his only son (Jesus) to earth about 2000 years ago. He lived in an earthly body for about 33 years, and then was crucified as a sinless man. His crime that deserved such a cruel punishment? Claiming to be God. He then rose from the dead three days later, and through this death and resurrection sacrificed himself so that our relationship with God can be restored and we can spend the rest of our lives in Heaven (which, as stated before, is basically gonna be the best place ever). It is this event (specifically, Jesus' earthly birthday) that we know as Christmas. The gifts we give every year could be considered a carrying-on of the gifts (gold, frankincense, myrrh) that the 3 Wise Men gave to Jesus.

Or is it?

Most of the world doesn't truly know Christmas as the celebration of Jesus coming to Earth. (Note that in this case I mean know and act upon; same concept as knowing that eating a Cook-Out Tray will satisfy your hunger, but not acting on it. There's knowing, and then there's knowing.) Judging by what everybody talks about (myself included, sadly), Christmas is about stuff. More specifically, getting as much of it from friends & family as possible (see opening lines of this post). Talk about being out of touch with what this holiday, or literally Holy Day, is all about. Oh, and remember Thought #2 from earlier, about winning by getting the most toys? The Bible says that those are going to be worthless. Don't take this to mean I'm against giving and getting stuff for Christmas (or just in general)... it's just that this exchanging of gifts (more specifically, the getting of gifts) has become the central focus of Christmas. Which shouldn't be the case.

So while I know I'm a few days late with this, think about why everybody gives stuff (see Thought #1: Remember the reason for the season.)... to celebrate God's gift of eternal life to us, through Jesus coming to Earth to save us from eternal punishment in hell. If you want to know more, here's a link for a better explanation of the Gospel story. If there are any more questions you have please don't hesitate to leave a comment or send an e-mail to jkniffenjr at gmail dot com.

Merry Christmas!