EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER
A week ago my little family had to make a trip to Target (normally the happiest place on Earth). As we worked our way through the anxious crowd of people our band of small humans did what they do best; scream, grab things off of shelves, and ask when they were going to eat. It took much longer than normal and I could feel my own anxiety rising. I began to buy into the feeling that I should be purchasing more unnecessary gifts and my husband would promptly remind me about that thing called ‘a budget’ and that we didn’t 'need' a life-sized bear head in our bathroom and place each thing back on the shelf.
When we finally returned to the car and got everyone and everything buckled in we all took a deep breath in the silence. My calmer half looked at me and said,
“I am totally sure that this was not what Jesus intended when he was born.”
As people poured out of shops with carts brimming with things I couldn’t help but agree with him. Besides the fact that I am sure if Jesus was able to dictate where we bought gifts celebrating His birth he would want us to buy local, I am also fairly sure God wasn’t intending on this offshoot celebration of Jesus’ birth. Mass amounts of gifts and cookies and debt combined with the societal pressure to have the HAPPIEST and most JOYFUL season ever seems counter to the entire reason Jesus was born in the first place.
Jesus came because of our brokenness.
A brokenness that does not disappear when December rolls around and glowing trees go up and coffee shops switch from pumpkin to peppermint. For many adults, I would hasten to say for all of us, there is a sadness that comes with Christmas. It may be a tinge or it may be an all-consuming cavern but combine short days, dreary weather, darkness, the façade of a world with perfect functioning families juxtaposed on the reality of our own family or lack-there-of, and the reminder of loss that seems to be marked by the coming of a new year that will begin without those whom we have lost and there is some level of grief that accompanies Christmas for each of us.
The joy of Christmas must must must be in Jesus. There is no other balm to soothe the pains we walk through as people. There is nothing else that can fill us up, make us whole, and deliver us from our own brokenness besides Him. The gift of Christmas is owning our true emotions and knowing that despite all of it, despite all the crap that will happen to us throughout a year, Jesus will come again and deliver us with a love that is all-consuming and free for the taking.
You can’t buy that at Target.
