(THIS WEEK: Smart Christmas Shoppers.)
COMMENTS: awaken@Sonrisen.com or through Facebook (See Comment section below.)
Christmas clubs are portals to heaven.
If you store up your treasures in heaven, they mount up without you thinking about them. They somehow add interest on our payments. I’ll leave that to God’s accounting principles.
Each week, I’ve been taking the kids to the bank. They struggle with this “chore,” but they sure like to sneak an extra lollypop from the teller. Before they know it, September rolls around and they have a wad of cash to spend on Christmas shopping.
Such a deal! It’s such a deal because it’s been my greenbacks being deposited.
This metaphor for life continues because that is what the Christian faith proposes. We go to the bank, Jesus makes the deposit and we get the benefit.
There are no statistics to back this up, but it is probably not unreasonable to guess that most who are shopping for the Christmas spirit don’t truly understand this profound “deposit.” If they did, they’d slide more gracefully into the Christmas spirit.
Christmas is not only the time to remember His deposit on the tree, but what He gave up to come here as a baby. All of heaven must have gasped. He cried. He was a baby.
Another reason for the fumbling of many to get into the spirit is that they know little of Jesus. They’ve “shopped” for other gods; from the ones that are on sale to the ones that are so expensive they require all of a person without any of the benefits.
The kids might not understand the Christmas club in May, but they sure do when they get their reward. Perhaps we’ll be used to help some shoppers get to the bank this season.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: People are actually shopping all year - looking for the gods of this world and the false gods of the supernatural. Perhaps we will be more in the Christmas spirit ourselves if we shop for the shoppers. What tangible steps would this require?
Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you--guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us…Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever…so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’ Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky…For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.
2 Timothy 1:14 (NIV), Daniel 12:3 (NIV), Philippians 2:15 (NIV), Matthew 2:2