THRILL of HOPE - Day 10

“The thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices…..”

Christmas carries with it not only the celebration of Jesus coming, but also the celebration that He revealed Father and established the way to be with Him.  There is nothing we can contribute or add.  We are the recipients of an immeasurable gift.  We are offered more than we could ever accomplish or produce.  We can’t be good enough or do enough or be holy enough to gain this gift.  This gift comes from the love of Father out of His good pleasure to give it.  He doesn’t have a list, and He is not checking it twice to find out if you’ve been “good” enough.  The ingrained approach of being good enough to get to Father should be forever erased.  Holiness is not the path to Him it is the result of His gift.  Enough of the striving and tallying up your deeds to see if you measure up.  Father is not the Elf on the Shelf watching if you are being good or not so He can determine if you get gifts or not.  He doesn’t have a list.  Jesus made it all white as snow.  He did what we could never do. 

The magic and wonder created through the traditions of Santa Claus and the newer addition of the Elf on the Shelf are such excellent ways to stir young hearts to the amazement of Father’s gift(s) to us.  It shows us how mankind just woke up one morning and a surprising gift was put before us shining in light.  I love what those little traditions can do in letting our hearts enjoy that concept.  When those practices move away from that idea of gifts and start shaping little hearts that they have to be “good enough” to get gifts, it starts moving away from truth and mostly becomes a manipulating control effort.  Homes and pulpits both have opportunity to work in those manipulative ways when we move the focus to our “good deeds” instead of His.  The Gift is replaced with behavior modification.  Christmas isn’t about behavior modification.  Santa Claus isn’t the representation of a judge watching to see if you break the rules.  He is to help show us that gifts come unearned and even more than we expected.  The Elf is like the Spirit that is surprisingly with us every day in all sorts of ways, but he shouldn’t be used to manipulate our children by telling them the Elf is watching to see if behavior is good enough to get gifts.  We want all the symbolism of Christmas to be the grand celebration of what He did and does that we can never do. We will never be good enough for gifts.   

May our hearts be fully set on what He has made us, not what we can make ourselves.  We will live out the holiness He’s made us.  We will live out the fruit of the Spirit as the extension of love not the law to earn.  The thrill of hope is He did it because we can’t.