By Dr. Greg Davis, Senior Pastor
Christmas is one of the happiest times of the year…and one of the saddest.
For people facing the first Christmas without someone special or without some who passed away just this year, who are a long way from friends and relatives, who live alone…Christmas is a particularly difficult time of year.
A few years back I knew a woman who was not very happy in her life. It seemed Christmas just magnified her unhappiness. So every December she found a way to get admitted to the hospital, to get away from all the Christmas hubbub. There she could live in her own world undisturbed by the sights and sounds of everyone else seemingly having fun.
One family always used to take their vacations during Christmas. He would load his family in the car and they’d head for south Florida and spend Christmas Day on the beach. No turkey, no jingle-bells, just escape.
If Christmas is less and less fun for you, it may be that you expect the wrong things to happen. I do not believe there is any gift under a tree that will make you really happy or change your life. What will make you happy or change your life is a change of your inner intentions, which does not come from opening packages. Real gifts are seldom wrapped in bright paper. No, it comes from the hard work of looking at your life, finding out what is wrong, seeking help, and changing negative thinking into positive hopeful living.
This is the time of year when we remember that God sent a Truth into the world. Since that time men and women have always had hope. Not joy. Hope. Hope that we are lovable. Hope that things can change. Hope that we can be transformed. Hope that someone cares. Hope that love is stronger than hate. Hope that we can start over.
If any of us have the Christmas blahs, let us search the heavens until we find the Hope of Christmas, that mysteriously we can be made new.