Believe!

’Tis the season … to be jolly?  Depends on whom you ask.  Christmas time is enjoyed and used and exploited and twisted and embraced by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes.  It makes some folks jolly, others jaded, yet others hopeful in the deepest way.

Retailers relish the days from Black Friday to Christmas Eve for their profit potential (of course, those in retail may also cringe at the long hours and added pressure of the season).  In this e-commerce age, I imagine the folks at Amazon and UPS are drooling with jolliness!

I was in Philadelphia the other day and wandered into Macy’s around noon to hear the daily Wanamaker organ concert.  The store glistens with holiday lights and lavish ornaments, and it features a three-story Christmas tree in their enormous inner atrium.  And high above the shoppers was the holiday theme in big red letters:  “BELIEVE.”

Of course, this is a great message—but again, I should say it depends.  It depends on what or whom you believe.  The goal of the slogan for Macy’s, it seems, is to arouse a fairytale twinkle in shoppers’ hearts:  the lights, the music, the colors, the crowds, the bargains—it’s magic!

But back to “believe”:  in what or whom? In nice feelings, sweet smells, and sentimental memories?  Okay, I guess that sounds pleasant.  But does it really satisfy the heart?  Does it address the gloom or grief weighing on the souls of so many who walk through life and feel adrift, alone?  All the holly-jolly hoopla is like a Band-Aid—covers the wound for a moment, and yet it cannot satisfy deep yearning.

My hope this season is that the Lord will make more and more of us, and our neighbors, dissatisfied with the routine holiday cheer.  That he’ll help us look out upon a troubled world and look in the mirror as well, and recognize everyone’s foundational need for God’s love… and then call out to him for real hope and real joy and real, eternal life!

Why did the Son of God enter this world that first Christmas Day?  Jesus says, “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  What was God’s Advent mission?  “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).  Does your heart grasp the true wonder of it all?  Do you believe?