Today’s reading is on James 3 & 4.
Every year at this time of year, I reflect on how I felt about Christmas as a very young boy. I remember the excitement about vacations from school, a bunch of Christmas treats, all the decorations, and of course, what presents I’d be getting. One unfortunate by-product was always seeing the excitement dissipate; anticipation and wonder turning to disappointment and frustration as the season passed by, jolly merriment turning into exhaustion. As I’ve grown older and more able to understand the significance of Christmas, this focus on the material has slipped away and been replaced more in cherishing the immaterial: family, time together, and of course, the celebration of the birth of a Savior. And now, lo and behold, it feels now like the Christmas season is more about lasting gratification than in my youth.
(Side note for my mother & father – I still very much appreciate all you did, even more so now, don’t worry!)
Reading these chapters of James this week, that shift is what came to mind, especially with the start of James 4: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” It’s no surprise that the world has diluted Christmastime into a celebration of “stuff”: gifts, decorations, snowy weather phenomena, some vague sappy notion of “goodwill” and “Christmas spirit” instead of the miraculous fulfillment of Scripture’s promise for a Messiah. But isn’t this more just one small example of the larger problem of material fixation we tend to fall into? We spend our time and energy on physical accumulation, vain pursuits, and self-gratification, sometimes at the cost of contention with neighbors, coworkers, friends, or family. We take what should be about glorifying God and turn it into a glorification of the world around us. Scripture is very clear about placing the world above God: in doing so, we become His enemies. Check out 1 Corinthians 15:24-26 if you need a reminder of what that will get you.
What better time of year to remind ourselves of James’ emphatic plea from this passage: God’s jealousy for our misplaced commitment is great, but His grace over our wrongdoings in greater. Greater than the words of our tongues, which can be both a blessing and a curse (3:5-9); greater than any wisdom of man, so often proudly relied upon (3:13-17); greater than the promise of an un-guaranteed tomorrow we tend to bet our hope on, instead of on Christ in the present (4:13-14). Certainly greater than any family get-together or vacation or holiday fruitcake or big cup of eggnog you’ll experience in the next few weeks. Christmas is absolutely a time to celebrate the priceless blessings God has bestowed upon us; but more so, an opportunity to celebrate the enactment of God’s redemption plan for man. We can’t cling to everything we have when our Savior’s birth is so worth proclaiming with everything we are.
Father, I just lift a simple prayer to you this morning: amidst all life’s chaos, let us be fixed firmly on you. Above all the wonders of our lives you’ve blessed us with, our Lord Christ Jesus being made fully God yet fully flesh is still the greatest. I thank you for this time to renew my focus on you & on your son; please help me remember at all times, in all circumstances, this holiday season and ever after, that the truest gift we have is eternal life, bought only by the blood of Jesus.