So it’s just a couple days after Christmas, and some of us (myself included) are feeling the post-Christmas let-down. At my house, we still have our decorations up! I’m always shocked at how fast the holidays go, and I love to hang onto the spirit of Christmas for as long as I can.
Every year, the speed of the holidays is so crazy to me…We spend so much time in preparation, there’s so much busyness, and then just like that, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fly by. And then before you know it, the tree’s starting to come down, and we’re starting to get settled back into the normal rhythms of daily life.
But what I do love about the weeks leading up to Christmas is they always speak to me with such a sense of expectancy…if you think about the first Christmas, you can see how Mary and Joseph would have been full of expectancy right before Jesus was born. Jesus was the fulfillment of the expectations of the nation of Israel, who had been waiting hundreds of years for the Messiah. For us, celebrating Christmas thousands of years later, we also have a couple months of expectancy and preparation for the holiday as we cook and shop and celebrate with our loved ones.
But there’s a side of expectancy that’s less warm and fuzzy for us…because another way to say expecting is…waiting. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like waiting as much as I like expecting. Waiting feels like trudging along. Waiting feels like there’s something dissatisfying or unfulfilling in our circumstances, and we haven’t received the solution yet.
“If we’re not waiting on something in our circumstances to change, for those of us who follow Jesus, we’re ultimately always waiting for the second coming of Jesus.” Click To TweetAnd here’s the crazy thing…At any given point of the year, no matter what’s going one, we’re always waiting on something. Always expecting. And it’s actually a beautiful thing, for as painful as it can feel at times. Because even if we’re not waiting on something in our circumstances to change, for those of us who follow Jesus, we’re ultimately always waiting for the second coming of Jesus. And we’re waiting in an even greater way than people waited for him at his first coming, because now we know the Messiah we’ve been waiting for.
The ironic thing is, even at the holidays when you would expect Jesus to be at the forefront of our thoughts, the busyness of life often keeps us from experiencing what it truly means to wait on the Lord…it’s kind of a “church-y” term we don’t know what to do with or how to practice.
So what do we do? We start by keeping Jesus at the forefront of everything we say, do, and think at all times…(No small order, right)?
But really, it all starts with our mindset. What I really want to remind us all of is that this life is meant to be lived in light of who Jesus is, and Christmastime is an opportunity to remember the great gift God has given us in Christ, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Here at the end of the Christmas season, I want to encourage you to make sure you memorialize, every single day of your life, the fact that Jesus is real. He’s alive, and he’s on the move, not only in your life but through your life, touching other people.
So. Before we totally move away from the holidays, let’s ask ourselves: how are we living in the reality that Jesus is real every day of our lives?
How are we living in the reality that Jesus is real every day of our lives? Click To TweetWe can do this with so many simple, daily steps that make a huge difference in the long-run. It starts when we all choose to do things as simple as having a devotional time, spending time in God’s Word, being a vibrant part of a local church, serving other people and growing in relationship with other people. These are all ways we get to promote in this world that Jesus is real.
I don’t want the Christmas season to come and go and have our awareness of Jesus come and go as well.
So whatever you decide will be your simple step to hold onto your spirit of expectancy at the end of this season, write it down…write down the ways you come up with to memorialize that Jesus is real. And let’s keep expecting Jesus each and every day, for the rest of this year and the upcoming year.