Every Day is Christmas for God!

No, this is not a deeply theological statement; it’s more of an observation and a hunch!  I base this on my collective observations of Christmas and my kid’s reactions to the gifts they received.  Let’s start from the beginning and I’ll try to explain the title. 

No, this is not a deeply theological statement; it’s more of an observation and a hunch!  I base this on my collective observations of Christmas and my kid’s reactions to the gifts they received.  Let’s start from the beginning and I’ll try to explain the title. 

After months and months of really hard work and God’s providence my wife and I were able to bless our kids with some fairly nice Christmas gifts.  We anticipated and dreamed about how the kids would react to the gifts and we even thought that maybe, just maybe they would run to us with great excitement and hug us while repeating “Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!”  We really didn’t need the thank you but we wanted it.  We wanted to hear that what we blessed them with was appreciated.  We wanted to know that our hard work and that God’s providence were not ignored. 

Ahhh, but there is one snag in the above scenario…Santa Clause! You see though my wife and I worked like 90 dogs to get to this point, it will be Mr. Clause who will get the credit. He’ll show up and in a flash he will be the instant hero.  He’ll get to eat our homemade cookies, drink our hot chocolate and fly away with the Saint of the Year award! Happens every year and there’s nothing my wife and I can do about it.  I love Old Saint Nick but you would think he invented all this present giving at Christmas thing!  Hey Santa – ever heard of Magi?

Now, there is a solution to our problem here, we will simply give our kids a few presents on Christmas Eve and then they will joyfully run to us with open arms thanking us for our love and generosity.  Finally, we will get the gratitude we so long for.  Did that happen you ask?  Uhhh NO! Well…Kinda! We had to prompt the kids and ask them to thank us and of course, they uninspiringly obliged with “Thanks Dad, Thanks Mom” and then they quickly turned to their toys and poof – that was it. Our dreams of tear filled thankfulness from our kids was over quicker than it took for the kids to unwrap their presents and let me tell you that was pretty quick.

Now to the point of this story!  Can you image that this is how God feels every day? Every day he showers us with His blessings and every day we probably sound fairly uninspired in our appreciation of Him.  I’m guilty of it and I know you are too.  Oh I know that we have our moments where we are genuinely inspired with our Thank You but that’s usually when the gift He gave us meets our greatest need at the time.  Truth is every good and perfect gift is from above; just look up James 1:17 and see.  I don’t know about you but I need to do an inventory of all the blessings God provides me every second of my day and be in constant Thankfulness – Eph 5:20.  By the way, I’m pretty sure that God doesn’t need our approval but I’m pretty sure He desires our appreciation.   After all He gave us the ultimate Christmas gift with His son Jesus…and with Jesus every day is Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Brian

PS – Hey Santa read this! – “And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Matt 2:11