The Return.13

"Be always watchful; for you do not know the day or the hour when the Son of Man will return. 

Live your life in a prepared manner, your lights burning brightly; like those servants who wait with expectancy for the sound of the Lord’s approaching.

It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one of these words to fail." 

--Jesus

After reading these words of Jesus, I turned on my Christmas tree lights...

Oh, so you don't think that's what He means by letting "your lights burn brightly?"

Silly you say?

Maybe. Maybe not.  The vast array of Christmas lights and decorations, whatever the motivation - commercialism, paganism or real reverence - is a cheerful reminder that humanity deeply longs for something science can never give: Hope in The Unseen Hand that Heals and Helps us Heavenward.

Emmanuel. 
God With Us. 
God Like Us. 
We like God. 
Oneness in Sacrificial love and giving.

"If the joy that alone makes life worth living, the joy that God our Maker is just like Christ, if it be a true thing in my heart, how can I not believe in Christmas?"
(adapted from a quote by George MacDonald)

For unto us a child is given, to us a King with the heart of childlike obedience and love! Until we can celebrate His physical return, this world-wide yearly return to the celebration of His birth is a grand reminder that love is the greatest gift of all!

A Merry Light-Filled Christmas to you!

The Promise Of The Spirit.1

"It is the Spirit
 that has the power
 to give life."

                      -Jesus

Another Christmas season is upon us.  Do you suppose Jesus gets annoyed at all the people who won't celebrate the season properly?  Wait, what is the proper way to celebrate, it is His birthday after all?  
-Purge the urge to get caught up in the commercialism? (saw a young Amish-man at Walmart picking out a Nerf-gun, presumably for a child...are there no sanctuaries of simplicity left in this world?!). 
-Feel indignant at the insufferable secular infiltration into His important incursion? (Believe in Santa/Don't believe in Santa...)  
-Pout at the potency of pitiful popular sentiment? ("The Dog Who Saved Christmas"...seriously?)
-Antagonize atheists who attack our sacred symbols?  (Stop making me say "Happy Holidays!"...darn you!)

Or maybe its to quietly and thankfully remember that this season represents all that Jesus is about: attracting to himself all that makes life troublesome - our lack or want magnified by our inability to satisfy it!

My Christmas wish for you, follower of Jesus, is to be reminded of these wonderful truths, from friend George Mac:

• that the soul [filled with] harmony has more life, a larger being, than the soul consumed of cares;

• that the sage is a larger life than the clown;

• that the poet is more alive than the man whose life flows out that money may come in;

• that the man who loves his fellow is infinitely more alive than he whose chief effort is to exalt himself above him;

• that the man who strives to be better, is better, than he who longs for the praise of the many;

• And, best of all, that the man to whom God is all in all, who feels his life-roots hid with Christ in God, who knows himself the inheritor of all wealth and worlds and ages, yea, of power essential and in itself, that man has begun to be alive indeed.

Image Author Unknown

"Let us in all the troubles of life remember—that our one lack is life—that what we need is more life—more of the life-making presence in us making us more, and more largely, alive." 

--George MacDonald, Life, Unspoken Sermons II

May you, by the Power of the Spirit, experience more and more of the Life He came into this world to let us taste, and in our tasting create a greater longing for, the love that satisfies as it ever expands its own life-giving presence -- in us and through us!