The Reason for the Season

This week I asked Pastor George McVey to be a guest blogger. If you read Nugget Nate and the Polecat you will be familiar with his fiction writing. This post is from the pastor side.

So I sat here thinking about the holiday season. The lights are going up the carol’s are being sung, we are very busy with the bustle and hustle of shopping for the perfect gift. We are so busy that we hardly ever think about what we are celebrating anymore. We know it in our heads and we may stop for a moment when we see a Christmas card or Nativity scene; but we don’t stop and just think about what that meant.

Emmanuel, God with us; one of us, imagine that. There was a song a few years ago that said; “What if God was one of us?” Not what if, but when God was one of us. God the creator of the universe decided to step out of His Glory, His Majesty. He decided, I love them so much I am going to redeem them myself. I’m going to become one of them and pay the price necessary to bring us back to relationship with me.

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We look at that baby in the manger and we think what a miracle what a great thing this is. Do we ever stop and think this Baby, this Miracle is only the preamble to the real miracle. That little baby came to die for you, me and everyone who ever lived. What a thought that is. Yes, the angles proclaimed His birth; yes the wise men traveled to see the new born king. But there was one other who was looking for this child. A man named Simeon. He wasn’t looking for a baby who would be king. He was looking for a Messiah, a redeemer. He was looking for the Child born to die for the sin of the world.

For just a moment today, stop and put yourself in Simeon’s place. You see the child in his mothers arms. You see the joy this bundle of life brings to his parents and you know that his life was born to end as the sacrifice for your sins, their sins, everyones sins; what do you say to them? Do you say anything, or do you go on your way without warning them that things aren’t going to end the way they think? Simeon told them what he knew that this baby’s life would wound his mother’s heart.

Today, as you prepare to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus stop for just a minute and think. This little Baby came for one purpose and one purpose only; to die for your failures, shortcomings and sins. The reason for the season is not Jesus as the ornaments and Christmas cards say. The real reason for the Christmas season is YOU.

As David used to say at the end of his psalms, Selah: pause and calmly think about that!!!! Oh and Merry Christmas.

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