Just Like That, Christmas is Over…Now What?
With every passing year, Christmas seems to come and go faster and faster. It seems like it was just last week that we were celebrating Christmas 2020.
It’s easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of the Holidays and lose sight of the “Reason for the season”. With all the excitement building up to Christmas, what’s left after can be depressing. All those decorations need to be taken back down and put away for another year (week).
Don’t let the fun seasonal activities cause us to forget that we’re celebrating the coming of our Heavenly Savior.
In Matthew 1:18-25 Joseph is told to accept Mary as his wife and to name the baby Jesus because He will save people from their sins. This all happened as the fulfillment of the prophecy in Isiah. “They will name Him Immanuel.” Immanuel means “God with us”.
God is with us… Not just for the day. He is with us every day.
We’ve been falling short of God’s plan from the very beginning. Adam and Eve in their desire to be like God, fell for Satan’s pitch and did the one thing God commanded them not to do.
Like Adam and Eve, we still are persuaded by Satan to do things we shouldn’t. We’re fortunate that we were given the gift of Jesus.
God’s gift of Jesus is like any present we get, if we don’t open it and use it, there’s no benefit to getting it.
We’re like Paul when he writes about how he struggles with doing the things he wants to and not doing the things he doesn’t. We’re pretty good at messing things up.
A couple was eating pizza with their son who is in a group home. While they were still eating, the cleaning lady came in. They apologized for the mess and said they would clean it up. The cleaning lady just kept cleaning and said, “This is what I do.”
This is what Jesus does for us. He cleans up our messes.
This doesn’t mean that we should just go be as messy as we can be. If we accept God’s gift, we will do all that we can to keep the messes to a minimum.
As we move past this Christmas and into a new year, remember that Immanuel, God with us is that Gift which we’ve been given.
Use this Present today and every day and enjoy it!