An Intense Moment at the Temple

This was a really good lesson for me – really exciting and very relatable…

I was very disappointed and disgusted with last year’s Christmas. I found it almost impossible to get into the “Christmas spirit.” Everywhere I turned, it was nothing but commercialism. It just made me sick. Very few people knew the real meaning of Christmas anymore – it was all about spending enough money to get you in debt because that’s how you really showed love. It was about seeing who could find the best deal on the one thing everyone wanted. It was about craving things that you didn’t need and in a year, you probably wouldn’t even know where it was. It was all about having the best decorations on the block – and just try to find a nativity set this year, I dare you….

Where was the celebration of the Christ-child?
Where was the humility of his birth?
Where was the rejoicing with the angels?
Where was the laying down of your most precious earthly possessions?

What hit hardest for me was to find out quite a few churches in our area were closed that day.

As we do every year, we went to Christmas Eve communion – a beautiful, intimate service, I sat there upset. I wondered why I couldn’t get into the “Christmas spirit” this year. Why was I letting all of this bother me? And then it hit me – I WAS in the Christmas spirit – the true Christmas spirit – what it was all about…. I was hurting for those who I knew would be alone this year… the shut-ins, the widows, the orphans…. I was grieving for the lost innocence of the season. And I was celebrating the Christ-child above all else. I didn’t have to be concerned with the commercialism, the decorations, the presents….. all I had to do was sit still, be quiet, and if I listened hard enough, I could still hear the angels singing….

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Another thought that occurred to me was the zeal that God had for the church as a building itself. How holy it was supposed to be and how man had depraved it of that…. How we still do that today – we bring in our secular movies, music, magazines and claim that we are using them to illustrate God or that its just a building so it cant be defiled, besides its just entertainment, we arent participating in these things ourselves….

It just seems to me that we are ok with watering down the church and the Bible…. but I don’t think God is ok with it…