It seems like the holiday season gets harder every year.
Besides trying to shop for gifts on a budget, there are all the parties and
gatherings, decorating, colder weather, travel, and attempting to remember the
real reason for Christmas. And for accountants, there’s the added fun of trying
to close out one year and get ready for the next. For some of us it’s just too
much—too many people and too many expectations—and it makes me want to crawl
into a cave and hibernate until March. I’ve often thought we ought to move the
holiday observances to some other month. How about Thanksgiving in October and
Christmas in February?
I wrote that first paragraph yesterday, but then couldn’t
think where to go from there. Then last night I read Psalm 8:4 (ESV), “What is
man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You care for him?” This
was my prayer:
You don’t give up and You never change Your mind, even
though we are usually ungrateful and apathetic about Your love. We’re also
ignorant of what it really cost You to make Your love manifest to us. We can’t
begin to comprehend the heights and depths and lengths of Your love. We go
blithely through Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrating a Baby in a manger without
any astonishment that You would send Your Son for us, especially considering
the fact that His life would end on a cross.
As we head into this holiday season, let us not be blinded
by busyness and traditions, but let us be awestruck by the wonder of Your love
for us that is beyond all measure. May this reality completely change our
perception of the holidays this year and every year!
“In this the love of
God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so
that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but
that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John
4:9-10).
