(THIS WEEK: So Far Removed.)
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The plastic baby-god looks me in the eye as if to say, “Do you really think this is what it’s all about?”
Walking through Lowe’s, I am confronted by a ten-foot bold red “Joy” Christmas decoration that impersonates a gateway to the holiday season. Behind this monstrous sign lies every kind of material gunk that you could want for your home to feel like Christmas.
What the hell? Yea, I meant that word: hell.
It’s so far removed from the heart of God’s incarnation that this has to be from hell. It even feels like hell - like I have to take a bath after leaving the store.
Why not call it what it is? Hell.
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What if it were you? You are invisible standing next to two people and you overhear this conversation about you…
Someone asks, “Do you know him?”
“Of course I know Josh. He’s that superficial guy who doesn’t really say a lot but shows up everywhere and is always the topic of conversation.”
“Hold on!” you cry. “That’s not really who I am. You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
But you are invisible and it falls on deaf ears as they wrestle their oversize decoration into their shopping cart.
“Better get one of those big dollies for that one,” you hear one say as they depart. “Oh, and have a great Christmas.”
Ugh. What’s happened? How did it happen?
When we don’t Jesus we don’t know ourselves. We end up worshipping the plastic god made in our image.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: The way we celebrate Christmastime didn’t suddenly fall into the hands of Satan overnight. Little by little, earnest symbols and traditions were captured. Would you be one determined to return them to their rightful Owner?
[He] put on weight and bucked; you got fat, became obese, a tub of lard. He abandoned the God who made him, he mocked the Rock of his salvation. They made him jealous with their foreign newfangled gods, and with obscenities they vexed him no end.
They sacrificed to no-god demons, gods they knew nothing about, The latest in gods, fresh from the market, gods your ancestors would never call “gods.” You walked out on the Rock who gave you your life, forgot the birth-God who brought you into the world…"Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?
Deuteronomy 32:15-18 (TM), Matthew 2:2 (NIV), Editor's brackets.