“I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
5:30 Christmas morning, 2016 and I have been up for a couple hours already. This is just another day. People don't want it to be so. I read a post yesterday about this time of year being our annual glimpse into what Kingdom living is supposed to look like. People feeding the poor, stopping to help a motorist, and giving money to charity are just a few of the things we do during this time of year that we don't usually do. Me? I bought myself a donut to have with my coffee. I don't normally do that.
Christmas for me is full of bad reminders. I have struggled this time of year for the last 5 years. Facing truth, changes perspective on many things. You see my mother's mother used to cancel Christmas and have mental breakdowns this time of year. In response to that, every single year as far back as I can remember, I heard the words, "You are not going to ruin my Christmas. I never had a good Christmas growing up." So in turn, she made sure ours sucked too. When my kids were little it was still about her, but when I had grandkids, I decided I don't need it anymore. She actually made me and my sister go with the person who molested us to get a Christmas tree one year. I am not a fan of Christmas trees. If and when I had one it was for my kids and when they grew up, and if they lived with me, they could get one themselves. What it comes down to is this: I hate fake. If you aren't going to be nice to me the rest of the year, don't do it now.
I am house sitting. This morning I am looking down on this valley and all the lights on in the hundreds of homes and I wonder how many parents will wake up angry from their childhoods, what they didn't get and take it out on their kids. I wonder how many will fake this whole Christmas thing from their smiles to their "I love the gift". We know some kids will get nothing, some will watch their parents get high or drunk, and worse things, but I am talking about the perfect "movie set" Christmas getting ruined when mom explodes because somebody accidently knocked a ball off the tree.
I would rather hibernate, read my book and work toward healing. I don't fake smile very well at all. I have seen nothing this Christmas about Christ. I have seen Santa, Rudolph, Charlie Brown and Frosty, but no Jesus. There is that one short scene in Charlie Brown's Christmas where Linus tells what Christmas is all about, but we have to go back to the cartoon from 1965 to find Jesus mentioned?
There is so much deception out there. Very few want the truth. I would rather face God after telling only one person in my life time His truth, than stand before Him having told thousands a twisted Satan Claus version of the truth. I would rather have no friends and tell the truth than have superficial friends who don't really know me because I have told them what they want to hear. Deception comes way to easy to Christians. I used to think most people were good, until I started hanging out with Christians. Lukewarm, one foot in the world and most of the other foot too.
There are too many starving people eating apples in the dark, so they can't see the rotten parts!
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