Christmas in September

I’m listening to Christmas music. In September. I’m not crazy, I’m just a choir member. At first, I wasn’t ready for Christmas music. I’m really not ready for Christmas, not ready to even start thinking about it yet.

I finally figured it out, though. It’s not so much Christmas that I dread about Christmas. It’s the shopping and hustle and JUNK, the whole secular-who-needs-to-even-mention-Jesus-to-have-Christmas part of the season that depresses me. It’s feeling pressured to find the right gifts and not really succeeding at that. It’s feeling the pressure to spend more money than I should on those presents. Gift giving/receiving is clearly not my love language. :-)

But the worship and the wonder of the Incarnation? That part of Christmas I never get enough of. And the Christmas music we’re singing this year is ALL about Jesus. This I’m ready for. The chills I get when we sing, “Fall on your knees....” or when we sing, “Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel,” or when I start pondering the depths of what Emmanuel, God With Us, means to fallen humanity. When I ponder the wonder of the fact that after hundreds of years of silence, God spoke into the darkness, and He Himself came to redeem fallen mankind. Jesus is the Light of the world. He is the way, the truth and the life, only through Him can anyone come to the Father. That part of Christmas, I celebrate all year long in my heart.

So bring on the Christmas music. I’m rejoicing in wonder at the love, the mercy, the grace, the hope of my Savior.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” John 1:1-5

“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. he came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:10-14