Oh holy night the stars are brightly shining…this is the night of our dear saviour’s birth!
Wishing one and all the peace and joy of Christ this Christmas season!
Christmas is the time of giving and sharing, it is the time when our families forget their differences and come together to celebrate. When we decorate our houses, put up christmas trees and spend enormous sums of money on clothes and gifts for ourselves and our loved ones. But very often we forget why we are doing all this…why am I writing about it? Maybe, because I too, almost completely forgot the reason why I celebrate Christmas in the first place!
As every year, this year too I went for the midnight service on Christmas eve to my church. I arrived fifteen minutes early, hoping to get a seat. But, to my surprise the church premises was overflowing with people, many of whom I had never seen before, not that I know everyone who comes there. But there were hawkers selling Santa Claus hats and balloons, children screaming, it was like I was in a middle of a fairground!
As the service began (I ended up standing right through), people started leaving! Then it dawned on me that these weren’t Christians at all, they were people from other faiths who had come to ‘experience’ the midnight service, like it was an annual fair. Then I looked around again, and it did seem like many of us (including me) had come there, like every year, more for tradition sake than because we wanted to celebrate and witness Christ’s birth at the service. We had become victims of the commercialisation of this beautiful event.
Thankfully, by the end of the service, I realised that the celebrations were meaningless if I didn’t completely understand God the Father’s love for me, and his expression of this love by sending Jesus to save me.
I sincerely hope that by the end of this Christmas season a majority of the world has experienced god’s love. I maybe optimistic, but deep down in my heart I know it is possible…do you?
Wishing one and all the peace and joy of Christ this Christmas season!
As every year, this year too I went for the midnight service on Christmas eve to my church. I arrived fifteen minutes early, hoping to get a seat. But, to my surprise the church premises was overflowing with people, many of whom I had never seen before, not that I know everyone who comes there. But there were hawkers selling Santa Claus hats and balloons, children screaming, it was like I was in a middle of a fairground!
As the service began (I ended up standing right through), people started leaving! Then it dawned on me that these weren’t Christians at all, they were people from other faiths who had come to ‘experience’ the midnight service, like it was an annual fair. Then I looked around again, and it did seem like many of us (including me) had come there, like every year, more for tradition sake than because we wanted to celebrate and witness Christ’s birth at the service. We had become victims of the commercialisation of this beautiful event.
Thankfully, by the end of the service, I realised that the celebrations were meaningless if I didn’t completely understand God the Father’s love for me, and his expression of this love by sending Jesus to save me.
I sincerely hope that by the end of this Christmas season a majority of the world has experienced god’s love. I maybe optimistic, but deep down in my heart I know it is possible…do you?
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