Do you share the story of Christ at Christmas time? Do you try to create opportunities for that conversation to happen?
I grow a little more serious during the Holiday Season. I am ever aware that as the lights flicker and dance in the cool of the night and families frolic to the gift stores and spend feverishly trying to create that “perfect” Christmas, there are others that stand by and watch with broken hearts, broken lives and broken pocket books.
There are those that are empty and lonely. Those that are depressed, confused and sad. There are those in the hospitals and those by their bedsides. There are the ones on the street corner holding signs as we drive by “help me feed my family”. Blended families send their children off to have Christmas somewhere else…sometimes with strangers.
While some families seem happy and joyful on the outside, sometimes there is devastation on the inside that we cannot see.
In the midst of a most glorious season, the celebration of the birth of Christ, people cry.
But then isn’t that why Christ came? To heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds?
Sometimes I think we are afraid to look at the hurting, for it might spoil our fun. Spoil our joy.
Yet isn’t that what Christmas is all about? Isn’t that why Christ came? For the hurting?
I’m not trying to bring a downer on glad tidings, but I have been among the broken. While we are rejoicing and singing should we not also let this time of celebration stretch us to reach out to at least one hurting person?
We could pray
We could give
We could serve
We could ….
We don’t have to take much time in order to do one small thing, just one.
Let us not be afraid that one act of kindness to one hurting person will dampen our whole Christmas.
Don’t look away, but press in. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what to do or where to start. Ask God to help you love one person today, one hurting person. You may be surprised who that person may be.
Then all you have to do is look that person in the eye with the love of Christ and say “Don’t be afraid, I bring you good news”
I promise you, from there, God will take care of the rest.
