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Beware
the Idol of Busyness at Christmas
by: Paul David Tripp
Guard the
Meaning of Christmas
It is really sad how much of our time,
effort, and energies are captured by the cultural busyness of Christmastime,
rather than the core of the Advent story.
We allow
Christmas to be more about created stuff than it is about the incarnation of
the Creator. We've turned the story on its head.
The glory of this story is that the Creator
himself becomes a man to rescue us from our bondage to the creation.
For some,
Christmas has become about bondage to the creation. This is something we should
guard against.
We allow Christmas to be more about created stuff than it
is about the incarnation of the Creator.
Are We Overdoing
the Decorations?
Christmas can also become more about
decorating and acquiring than about being rescued.
We all
want to decorate our lives with beautiful things that we think will satisfy us.
Maybe what we've done with the Christmas
story is a metaphor for that desire.
What
we've done with this season is a metaphor for how we just want to decorate
everything so that life is beautiful to us. But that never ends up satisfying
us.
It's not
wrong to want your house to be beautiful at Christmas, but if that's what the
season is about, you've missed the whole point.
Christmas
proclaims that nothing but Christ's redemption is ever going to give us what
our hearts long for, rescuing us from things that can't satisfy.
It's not about created stuff, it's not about
decorating and acquiring. It's about the incarnation of the Creator - rescuing
us from all those false hopes.
Paul David Tripp (DMin,
Westminster Theological Seminary) is a pastor, author, and international
conference speaker. He is also the president of Paul Tripp Ministries. He has
written a number of popular books on Christian living, including What Did You Expect?, Dangerous Calling, Parenting, and New Morning
Mercies. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Luella and they
have four grown children. For more information and resources, visit
paultrippministries.org.
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