I’ve been kind of dreading Christmas this year. Being around people that are taxing, cold weather, the ever present pressure to buy things for people when I have no money, the idea of putting out a meal that I already know will stress my family out and having no desire to partake in any of it. I’m not even supposed to be in Colorado, but things never go the way we expect them to. I don’t want to celebrate Christmas this year, because I feel like there’s nothing to celebrate anyway. It’s just another day. I don’t get why I’m here or why I have to do Christmas things.
Really, I don’t, but the Lord is asking me to anyway.
“What’s the reason for the season?” He asked me. Well…
There’s a song out there called Colorado Christmas, and honestly, having spent every single Christmas of my life in Colorado, I think it’s inaccurate. It’s a short story about a man trapped in Los Angeles, California, longing to come home to Colorado for Christmas because Cali just isn’t cutting it.
In the song, the singer tells about the lack of Christmas spirit in California versus where it can be found in Colorado. From Telluride to Boulder, he says, you can feel the Christmas spirit everywhere. The snow, apparently, makes or breaks a Christmas.
While this is true in some cases, it’s not really the snow that makes Christmas. It’s not the lights or decorations or the fact that we’re all in Colorado for Christmas, and it’s not even the idea of gifts or anything. It’s Jesus.
The politically correct thing to say is that Jesus is the reason for the season. And yes. This is true. Why was Christmas invented? It’s the celebration of the birth of Jesus. But it’s more than that.
The entire reason Jesus was born was so that we could be with God in heaven. We have all heard this. But what no one ever talks about is why God wants us in heaven in the first place.
God wanted to love us. That’s the reason. The gift of this season is God himself. It’s been that way since ever, and it will continue to be that way.
Christmas is the only time of year that humanity actively comes together to embody the love of God: loving one another just because we choose to.
When you think about Christmas, what do you imagine? What comes to your mind? Probably snow, Santa, being with your friends and family… even the capitalist society we live in probably makes it in there with the stress that people tend to feel around the holidays and the buying of gifts for each other.
But Christmas isn’t any of that. It’s a simple, yearly reminder of God’s love for us.
So what’s the reason for this season?
God’s been teaching me to find him in every situation I’m in. But where is he at in this one?
Here in Colorado, it’s harder for me to hear God because there are familiar distractions here I can use to drown out the fact that I have absolutely nothing to do for the next twenty six days. I don’t seek him because I have other things to distract myself with.
But he’s here, just like he’s always been, and I’m finding him when I do take the time to look at him.
The reason for this time, while it is not ideal, is so that I can grow closer with God in the places I can’t see him. Where I get distracted and caught up in the stress of the things going wrong, in the busyness of the world, I find him and he gives me his love once more as a gift. Just like Christmas.
This is a season of intimacy with the Lord, and it’s already begun.
How does this parallel with the Christmas season?
It’s exactly like a Hallmark movie.
A tired, overworked woman moves to her grandmother’s country home she used to visit as a child in order to escape the noise of city life. She finds and falls in love with a handsome man who somehow makes all her problems go away.
I am the protagonist of the movie. If my intro didn’t tell you, I’m not really in the Christmas mood, just like the protagonist always is in a Hallmark movie. But in my busy, overworked life, I seek comfort. I go into the quiet places and look for things there to satisfy my soul, and I find the Lord as my refuge and my strength, the one who makes my whole life better just by being there. He loves me. I love him. I drop my life for him, I turn away from the things that take me from him.
Here in Colorado with absolutely nothing to do, I have found my quiet countryside. Jesus is the man I meet and fall in love with. My life is instantaneously better.
Hallmark had it right, and I’ve never even seen a Hallmark movie.
Being in a new place isn’t bad. Being in a new old place isn’t bad either, but less exciting- but if this is where the Lord has put me, then everything is going to be fine.
It may not be what I want. It may not be what I think is best. But what’s going to come out of this time is something better than I can imagine, because God just works like that. That is what I’m telling myself, because my head knows it’s true and one day my heart will know it too.
He gave us himself as the first Christmas gift. And now, in Christmas 2020, he’s still giving himself to us. To me, because he loves me, and he wants me to have that sense of being loved by him all the time, not just some of the time.
Especially when it’s difficult to tell that Jesus does love me anyway.
This time of intimacy is not something I would ever ordinarily choose to be doing. But here I am, because I do not have another choice. God found me and he’s given me the choice to turn to him or not.
What else am I supposed to do? He is my everything, and if it takes twenty six days to get over being stuck in Colorado, then that’s how long it takes.
Do I like being home? No. Are God’s gifts still here in my life? Absolutely.
His gift to me this season is intimacy. He has been giving himself to us every single Christmas for who knows how long, and this year that hasn’t changed. It just looks different.
Ask God what part of himself he wants to give you this month, because he’s got an answer for you, and it sure is an exciting one. Ask him what his reason is for the season.
And, as always, we move into fundraising, because I am at $10,571 and am trusting in God to bring me the $4,000 I need to meet this month’s deadline.
Just your… general friendly reminder. In other fundraising news, I am now one of two people in charge of helping the whole squad fundraise! Look out for some new and exciting things regarding that!
See you whenever I have something to write about next.
