CHRISTMAS 2010

George Offerman


This is the time of the year that one gets a chance to contemplate their relationships with the Lord, if they understand the nature of this time. Unfortunately, there are too many distractions and concerns getting in the way of remembering that God, through His infinite love, manifested Himself in human form for the sake of our salvation. This message is so lost in our times and it seems it is only remembered when one goes to Church on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. What a sad testimony towards our faith and our creator.

As Christians first and Americans second, what do we want to accomplish in the upcoming year? Will we be too focused on the economy and our pocketbooks, or will it focus more on the fundamentals of our faith, such as guaranteeing life for all, bringing the Word of God to a lost world, or simply just being loving and caring towards our fellow man? Unfortunately, this season tends to bring out good will, only to end when the tree is put away, and the Visa bills come in, because the true meaning of Christmas is misunderstood and cast aside like some used electronic gizmo that has outlived its usefulness.

Without question, this past year has brought many challenges to our country and way of life. How many have thought that it was brought on by our way of life? Many want to complain about what has happened, but want to do little about it, and will even do less when considering we all have a part to play in this. We have such a sense of entitlement in this country, and are very quick to blame others when things don’t go the way we want them to. This is the antithesis of Christmas, in which the Son of God took the form of a human, and ultimately died a brutal death for sins he did not commit in order to save those who don’t deserve it.

The sense of giving and charity should not revolve around a certain part of the year when people dress up in red suits ringing bells, and nice music is played on the radio, and all sorts of things are advertised for half price. What if God gave to us in the same fashion that we show giving and charity? We would only have a few weeks at the most each year that we could count on blessings, and it would be during the times of the rest of the year we would find out how helpless we really are. We would find that God’s protection and blessings are not a part time endeavor, and we would be really upset if we ended up with less than a full time God.

I am grateful there is a God out there who can deliver much more than I can ever imagine, and that it is not dependent upon my efforts to make it happen. We just have to be willing to accept this free gift and then carry it to the world. It definitely requires us to be open to discomfort and inconvenience, but this is such a small price to pay when considering eternity and what awaits us there. That is what the real message of Christmas is. Without the birth of the God man, all would be lost, and the amount of agony and suffering would be magnitudes higher than what we see today. This is the lesson we need to take from this Christmas. And no matter what happens next year concerning our country and world, we have a God that loves us to the point of death and will not abandon us in our hour of need.