Every gift reveals something about the giver, and every gift reveals something about the recipient. Kind of like when someone offers you a breath mint or a stick of gum. What does the gift of Jesus reveal about you?
Everything Jesus is, you are not.
Sometimes we are tempted to congratulate ourselves on our approximations of Christ-likeness, but that’s like comparing a preschool watercolor to the Mona Lisa.
Everything Jesus is, you are not.
The gift of Jesus reveals how deep our need for God truly is. Recently our family upgraded our television experience to include a DVR. Wow! No more commercials! I can fast forward right through those appeals. The rest of my life has been enslaved to these marketing vignettes. If you think about commercials today, you can see that we Americans are obsessed with five things: food, money, sex, amusement, and our appearance.
Those commercials are telling. They disclose our desires and the measure of our vanity. A fair appraisal concludes that we’re trying to find satisfaction at the price of our own souls. We engage in belly busting binges and budget busting shopping sprees that reveal the emptiness of our shallow lives. We’re feeding desires that are relentlessly unsatisfied leaving us nothing more than addicted and compulsive.
This is why the Bible speaks so passionately against idolatry. I’m not suggesting that we’re erecting statuary made of stone that we bow before. We’re more sophisticated than that. Our idols are often nothing more than the good things of God’s creation that we value more than the creator (see Romans 1:25). These good things become functional saviors in our lives which we use to deliver us from our private “hell.” They disappoint us because they do not and cannot deliver what they promise.
So into the world is born a baby, the gift of God. What does the gift say about you? God proposes that we exchange all of the idols that disappoint and fail us and find real life.
No comments:
Post a Comment