JOY TO THE WORLD! (So then why’s everyone so miserable?)

Believe it or not it actually is that time of the year again! Christmas!! Quite honestly, I have absolutely no idea how it got here. Last time I looked, I'm sure it was July. Anyway, whether I like it or not, it's here along with all the craziness that accompanies it. Packed shopping malls, road-rage, drunk drivers, Boney-M belting out in the supermarkets, exhausted shoppers, crying children, Santa's on every corner ringing bells and encouraging you to shop in the different stores.

Yet how many of the people rushing around decorating Christmas trees and spending more money than they should on unnecessary gifts really understand what they are celebrating? Perhaps that is why so many of them are so miserable? They do not understand the great sacrifice Christ made for them. Lets' face it, would you give up paradise, come down to earth, knowing all the pain and suffering you would go through, for a bunch of mostly ungrateful people? Would you? Didn't think so! Nor do they realize the amount of love that He had for us to do that and for His father. What love, what sacrifice, what a gift!

The other day I watched a very brave man, a bell ringing Santa in a local mini-mall, telling everyone that God Loves Them!! Now that was a first! I realized then that that is exactly the message that we should all be taking to the world at this time. So when you sit down to your Christmas dinner tell everyone near to you that we celebrate this day because Jesus was born to demonstrate just how much God loves us! You never know, by spreading God's good news, you may actually put some real joy into someone's Christmas!



THE GIFT

Madness, mayhem, glitter and lies,

Roasted turkeys, gift-wrap and good-byes

Every year we do it again

And again

Round and around it never ends

We search for something

We don't know what

Unfulfilled, saddened

We try again next year

Buy bigger gifts, bigger tree

All the time - lost

Then one Christmas day

A friend hands a 'gift' to me,

A miracle occurs

My eyes are opened

My heart set free as I am shown

God loves Me!