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| I know, I know! I'm right on the line of being a crazy cat lady. But seriously--how cute is our kitty in a basket?!?! |
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| Christmas in Vienna with my sweet friend, Ksenia! |
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| This is what my teaching bag looks like--candy, cookies, stuffed animals--no wonder I get very interested looks when I carry it around Vienna! |
This is one of my all-time favorite, go-to verses in the Bible. I have several verses that I whisper to myself over and over, words of faith and perseverance and assurance of God's love that have gotten me through many dark days and bright, sunny days, too. And maybe it seems weird to say this, since it's a verse about Christ's death and not His birth, but it is the essence of Christmas to me. And as I go through my ordinary, daily life, and certainly as I look at the news and see so many hurting people around the world, I'm more convinced than ever that what we really need is a little Christmas: a little hope, a little Light, a little love.
I am not necessarily a fan of Christian catchphrases. Oh, don't get me wrong--I believe that God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. So maybe, what I'm not a fan of is catchphrases that become just words and don't inform the lives of believers. If I say that God is good all the time, then even when times are terrible, He's still good, right? And I should silence the whining and complaining that I'm prone to do, right? But do I do that? If I don't, then my little catchphrase is just one more thing an unbelieving world is looking at and holding against the Savior who loves them. How many times have you talked to people who say they don't like Christians because they are hypocrites? Guess what? They're right. All too often, Christians are hypocrites. Of course, so are people who don't believe. It's just that Christians set themselves up to be held to a higher standard and then fall short again and again and again.
So what in the world does that have to do with Christmas? He came, even though He knew what it meant for Him. He came to die for us. He came even though He knew how stinky we were. He came for everyone. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. If we apply that to every situation in our world, doesn't that make a huge difference in how we look at it? Instead of us vs. them, doesn't it just become all of us, together? You may think one thing, and I may think another about some issue, but if we truly saw each other through the prism of God's sacrificial love for us, wouldn't that change how we dealt with each other? Wouldn't we care more about people, about situations, about every widow and orphan and 'least of these' if we truly understood that we are each the reason He came to die? I have to believe we would.
Sunday ends the week of prayer for international missions for Southern Baptists. I love the stories and pictures and testimonies of the way God is at work around the world, of people who are coming to know Him through the work of people I love very much. As I contemplate Christmas, as I contemplate what it means in a practical sense that God demonstrated His own love for me in Christ's death and resurrection, as I pray for the nations, may my overarching prayer be always this: Lord, help me to love like You love. Help me to be more like You. Break my heart for what breaks Yours. Let me live a life given over to Your plan, even when that plan seems crazy and impractical and just plain hard. In a world of darkness and despair, help me to live a life that shines Your light in real, practical ways--by kindness and love and compassion for the everyday, real people who daily walk beside me. Amen. Amen.
As believers in the Savior of the whole world, may we all live a life deeply informed by His love for each of us this Christmas. May we treasure the people He has put in our lives in tangible ways, with words and actions that show His irrational, extravagant love for all of us. May we live out our faith like we mean it. Blessings to you and yours, and merry, merry Christmas!
His,
Kellye
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