I was thinking this morning that I kind of felt guilty for not blogging something meaningful about Christmas yet. I mean, aren't Christian bloggers supposed to write something grand and spiritual about the celebration of our Lord's birth?
This led me to thinking about how I recently unsubscribed to a popular Christian author's blog. Not because it's not good. It's great, actually. She always has such beautiful, poetic posts that are deep and insightful. And I know that it's supposed to be inspiring, but when I read it something (the devil?) always makes me feel guilty for not having the same deep, poetic thoughts about God every day.
Have I mentioned that we actually did about 1/3 of the advent devotionals that we'd planned to do this year? So much for those picturesque visions I'd had of the perfect missionary family gathered around the advent wreath every night.
We also all three have colds right now. It's hard to meditate on the birth of Christ when you are walking around in a snotty, congested haze and just trying to placate a snotty, hacking toddler with as little energy as possible. (Which yesterday meant that he watched Veggie Tales and Cars all day... one day won't hurt him, right?)
Then, as I was reading and praying this morning, it was like God showed me that this is exactly why Christ was born-- because we're not perfect.
We celebrate Christ's birth not to show God how perfect we are, but because God, in his mercy, sent his Son to be born as a precious little baby and to grow into a perfect man who took on our imperfection and the consequence for it--death. He died and rose again, proving that he has power even over death.
And now (because God opened my eyes to this truth and I not only believe that it is true, but I also turned from my sin and committed my whole self and life to following him), when God looks at me, he doesn't see my imperfection and sin-- he only sees Christ's perfect life.
THAT is what all of this is about. It's not about how good of a dinner I can cook, or how faithfully we light the advent wreath, or how many awesome Christmas crafts I can make, or how poetic my blog posts are. It's about a Savior who was born to redeem us from our imperfection. And I'll take that Savior over all of the other stuff.
This led me to thinking about how I recently unsubscribed to a popular Christian author's blog. Not because it's not good. It's great, actually. She always has such beautiful, poetic posts that are deep and insightful. And I know that it's supposed to be inspiring, but when I read it something (the devil?) always makes me feel guilty for not having the same deep, poetic thoughts about God every day.
Have I mentioned that we actually did about 1/3 of the advent devotionals that we'd planned to do this year? So much for those picturesque visions I'd had of the perfect missionary family gathered around the advent wreath every night.
We also all three have colds right now. It's hard to meditate on the birth of Christ when you are walking around in a snotty, congested haze and just trying to placate a snotty, hacking toddler with as little energy as possible. (Which yesterday meant that he watched Veggie Tales and Cars all day... one day won't hurt him, right?)
Then, as I was reading and praying this morning, it was like God showed me that this is exactly why Christ was born-- because we're not perfect.
We celebrate Christ's birth not to show God how perfect we are, but because God, in his mercy, sent his Son to be born as a precious little baby and to grow into a perfect man who took on our imperfection and the consequence for it--death. He died and rose again, proving that he has power even over death.
And now (because God opened my eyes to this truth and I not only believe that it is true, but I also turned from my sin and committed my whole self and life to following him), when God looks at me, he doesn't see my imperfection and sin-- he only sees Christ's perfect life.
THAT is what all of this is about. It's not about how good of a dinner I can cook, or how faithfully we light the advent wreath, or how many awesome Christmas crafts I can make, or how poetic my blog posts are. It's about a Savior who was born to redeem us from our imperfection. And I'll take that Savior over all of the other stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment