Dear Cornerstone family,
Today is the fourth and final Sunday of Advent. Next Sunday the wait will be over! And on that blessed morn, we will gather for worship.
For some of us––maybe lots of us––worship on Christmas is, well, a bit of a downer. To be honest, a few Shurden children feel this way. I know this is hard to imagine, but getting dressed and getting out the door on what will almost certainly be a bitterly cold day to listen to Dad preach is not exactly their idea of a wonderful Christmas mornJ
Truth be told, it took their preacher Dad a moment to get used to the idea. When I first realized I would be preaching two Christmas Eve services followed quickly by two Christmas Day services my initial response wasn’t, “Yippee!” It took my heart a minute or two or three to catch up––to remember, as the old saying goes, “The reason for the season.”
Christmas on Sunday has a way of revealing our hearts, doesn’t it? It pushes us to answer hard questions about what we really love about this season. In a word, do we love the Christmas season, or do we love the Christ of Christmas?
You, like me, probably want to say, “Both!” And that’s right, at least to a degree. But you’ll know which you love more––the Christmas season or the Christ of Christmas––when you’re forced to choose between the two. In several small but real ways, worship on Christmas forces you to choose between the two.
For instance, it forces us to choose whether we’ll be slightly inconvenienced—rescheduling Christmas brunch—in order to worship the Christ who left all the comforts of heaven to save us. It forces us to choose whether we’ll delay gift giving until later in order to thank the Father in worship for the greatest gift he ever gave.
When I put it this way, it’s easy for me to see the right answer. But even seeing the right answer, the struggle doesn’t go away. Can’t you still hear that voice inside your head saying, “It would be so much easier not to go to church. I wouldn’t have to hear the kids whine. I could sit by the fire in my easy chair. Those pews are so cold and hard...” I know that voice well. It’s in my head, too. It wants me to choose the fleeting joys of the Christmas season over the eternal joys of the Christ of Christmas.
Which is why, if I may say so, I really need to be at church Christmas morn. To hush up that voice, and to move toward what I really want to be increasingly true about me––that I love the Christ of Christmas more than the Christmas season.
Your servant,
