Parking lots incredibly jammed.
Ridiculously long lines in all the stores.
Sales clerks haggard and overworked and tired of answering stupid questions.
Cashiers numb with exhaustion. Sick of ringing people up or dealing with their unswipeable cards.
People everywhere shopping, and when they’re not, they’re eating or punching numbers on a small screen.
Husbands in tow while their wives or girlfriends spend all their money.
Chirpy Salvation Army bell ringers greeting you with “Merry Christmas!”
Fat people everywhere. Fat people eating as they shop or work their phones or talk. So fat, some of them, that they more wobble than walk.
Wide-eyed, bothersome, money-hungry people trying to flag you down from their kiosks in malls.
Massages--$90 for 45 minutes.
Men salivating in Victoria’s Secret.
Knife peddlers.
Fragrance peddlers.
Okay, enough of the dreariness or mundaneness of this special season.
So easy to forget the true meaning, as they say, of Christmas.
Christmas marks the birthday of Jesus, the Son of Man, sent by God, and born in a lowly manger in a smelly stable in Bethlehem, to rescue all of us.
What an unlikely beginning!
Everyone on the planet wanted then, and still craves today, access to God. Jesus, who shared a barn at his birth with horses or camels or whatever other livestock they had 2,000 years ago, is our open access. The Son of Man is the great key to making our life complete and full of joy—not only on this Earth but also in Eternity.
Dirty Harry said “Make my day.”
Jesus said (I’m paraphrasing) “Make my day by coming to me. And in return, I’ll give you the promise of Eternal Life.”
Jesus—the great, stunning, empowered rescuer. The one and only savior of humanity.
A Christmas song captures the magic of his birth and life:
“Fall on your knees.
“Oh hear the angel voices!
“Oh night divine.
Oh night when Christ was born!”
Lest we forget what Christmas is REALLY about.
Merry Christmas, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, mothers and dads.
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