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Doubly blessed:
Christmas & Methodism
Here we are, only a few more days until that magical, exciting "day of days"! It will be all we've fondly anticipated if there's awareness that Christmas is not so much an event as an experience - not an occasion to be spent as in "How did you spend Christmas?" but a spirit to keep.
If there is a group that ought to understand the misuse and abuse of Christmas, it should be the Church. Yet, many of us are mindful of how difficult it is to resist the commercializing of this holy season. I know that every year I intend to celebrate Christmas with a deep appreciation for why we Christians honor this day as a celebration of the Savior's birth.
It is not that we don't celebrate this "holi-day." I guess it is that we don't experience the blessedness of Christ's presence because we are so absorbed in ourselves, our families, and our wants. We don't experience the joy that comes from the realization that God came down to us. And when you add to that the fact that God came down and identified with us and our struggles - well, that just blows me away.
Now, in addition to this, we Methodists have even more reason than others to celebrate Christmas. Christmas Eve also marks the anniversary of the founding of our movement in the United States. The Christmas Conference in 1784 celebrated the birth of our Savior and gave birth to the church that seeks to guide us in becoming disciples of Jesus. I find great joy in the knowledge that "God so loved (me) the world that he gave his only begotten Son..."
Maybe we don't feel the gratitude that we should because we would then have to admit we needed God to take the initiative to save us. Maybe we would have to acknowledge our total inability to save ourselves. Maybe I would have to admit my dependence on this God to act on my behalf when I am not willing to act on my own behalf. When I see Christmas this way, it brings tears to my eyes - to know how much God loves me and how few times I stop to thank God for loving me. I feel a flood of joy engulf me when I think about Christmas this way.
I am also filled with gratitude whenever I think about the people who gathered in Lovely Lane Chapel on Dec. 24, 1784. They gathered to think theologically about their existence and how God could use them once again. I feel this gratitude because I know that their time spent still benefits me today. So, as I look forward to celebrating Christmas 2004, I am doubly blessed. God came into the world to help me when I couldn't help myself. Frances Asbury, Thomas Coke, Harry Hoosier and others met to establish a Christian movement that helps many experience the continual presence of the Christ Child.
I move into Christmas with a sense of expectancy, suspense, excitement, and certainty, that just as something happened in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago, and just as something happened in Baltimore more than 200 years ago - something terrific is about to occur here and now.
Glory to God in the highest!
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