Merry Christmas. Today I would like to speak to those who just do not feel all that merry. I'm just going to lay it all on the line today. I hope that is okay.
For the last few months, it has been harder and harder for me to write. Hope deferred has made this heart sick and shame has surrounded me as I should know better. I have been in what I call my Elijah season. Hiding in a cave, going through the motions day to day, taking care of the people and things entrusted to me but my heart has not been in it.
I sat down this morning, after a night of thoughts whirling through my mind. After days of pondering so much about the Christmas story.
You see, I have been on the verge of walking away. The enemy has played with my mind and emotions so much in the last few months. The messages repeatedly taunting me, "you were not good enough", "you are unlovable", "what a mess you have made", "there is no hope', "what is the use?" "look at all you did and where did it get you?", "there is no justice" and "even God has abandoned you".
It has crossed my mind on more than one occasion in the last few months to completely walk away from organized religion. Shocking? Maybe to most, but I'd be willing to venture that if truly honest, many people have felt the same way at some time.
It has even crossed my mind to completely abandon my faith. The enemy's message, "this faith that you have clung to has done you no good" and "all things work together for those you love the Lord, except me".
In the last few years I have seen the righteous fall, I have seen the self professed Godly, do the most ungodly things. I have seen those that claim Christianity ruin the lives of so many without the blink of an eye and it has made me sick and weary and question this .god that I have served. Does he care? Is he really there? How could He allow all of this and so much more?
So I entered this Christmas season trying to fill the void with all the trees and trimmings, baubles and bows, greenery and gifts. And yet nothing seemed to lift the sadness that has overwhelmed me. Please do not misunderstand me, I am more than grateful for all that I have. I love my children dearly and the Lord has allowed me a good job and a decent home, yet in these last days I feel so much regret for wasted potential and so much sorrow for what might have been.
I have sat down several times to write to you what the Lord has been speaking to me in the last few days. Over and over in my thoughts and mind he has brought to me just how much we have gotten wrong. I'm not just talking the commercialism we will all admit has gotten out of hand, but of how we have lightened and diminished the enormity of the sacrifices made for the redemption of man.
How it was not a silent night in Bethlehem. How Mary was just a young frightened girl risking her life for a plan set in motion thousands of years before her birth. How Joseph made a choice to do the right thing when he had other choices. How Jesus left the glory and splendor of Heaven to come to Earth as the most helpless of creatures, mercifully given the gift of not remembering all that the planned entailed for just a little while. How the angels first appeared to the lowliest of an entire population to show that the plan of redemption and salvation was for all. Not just kings and queens, the educated and the lofty but for the meek simple man, men whom the whole world would pass by as insignificant. Men who spent a life of loneliness and solitude.
I have started four attempts at a Christmas message. Each is a few paragraphs in length, some a little more, but getting the words adequately on the page has been more than a struggle.
Last night in between writing I read several other blogs I follow, read a couple of devotionals and even listened to a sermon by a friend's pastor. Each with the same theme as the thoughts that have consumed me for days. We have it so wrong.
This morning I attempted two more posts and still could not get through them. Frustrated, I arose from my perch and went to linger in a hot bath. As is my ritual so often I took my mobile device with me and while soaking, I listened to last Sunday's sermon from one of my favorite preachers.
Sometimes God does intervene. If I had not slowed down for that bath, if I had gotten right into the hustle and bustle of making cookies I would not have stopped to listen to this very real, very timely, sermon that apparently I needed to hear this morning.
Perhaps some of you are where I have been this morning. there must be a reason, huh? And so today, leave you with someone else's thoughts. 30 minutes of your time is all I ask, I promise it will be worth it. Merry CHRISTmas dear friend. May the enormity of the price paid for you overwhelm you this Christmas season.
elevation church- Don't Make A Scene
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