Have a Merry Christmas - Leave the Go-rounds

I love the sights and sounds of Christmas - they light up the dark nights, warm up the cold air and spice up the quietness of the season. I love the holidays around Christmas - they give us time and room to wind down from a busy year, celebrate joyful moments with family and friends and create memories that last. Most of all, I love the person of Christmas -Jesus Christ our Saviour- he fills every detail of the season with wonders of his love. Isn't it lovely to watch children unwrap Christmas gifts, make snow men and have fun in the neighbourhood while parents and grown-ups seat by the fireplace to enjoy conversations and fellowship? Indeed, Christmas comes with lots of excitement.

Today, while reflecting on my well over 20 years of sending and receiving thoughtful Christmas love greetings and gifts from and to family and friends, one thing stood out clear to me: Unless I consciously leave the 'go-rounds' and step up to celebrate each Christmas with a mission, the routines of Christmas may quite simply rob me of the beautiful moments and JOY of Christmas. If you are 30 and over, you would have received at least 15 solid Christmas 'gbozas' in the form of love gifts and greetings and if you have, you will agree that sending and receiving Christmas greetings and gifts year after year can be a merry-go-round of sort. In every merry-go-round, the 'merriment' in the 'go' reaches a peak and then starts to diminish with each round unless something new happens in each round to add value and replenish the diminishing excitement. This is a law of life.

If Christmas is limited to a routine of shopping and spending or just sending and receiving gifts and greetings, the routines soon overshadow the JOY that Christmas brings and in the end, Christmas seasons simply pile up to a heap of Christmas go-rounds without value. I'm sure you want a Christmas that's better and brighter than that. I do.

I am suggesting that you enjoy this Christmas without the rounds of activities that have left you emotionally busted, spiritually bloated and financially broke in the previous rounds. Do it just the same way you eat fish and leave the bones. Get out of the Christmas routines and rounds and go a step higher -encounter love in a new dimension. Each Christmas should bring newness of hearts after all, or shouldn't it?

I encourage you to identify and celebrate a positive difference in this Christmas. Seek out and engage in activities and missions that add value to you and others. Reflect on the ultimate Gift of Christmas-Jesus Christ- and savor the JOY he brings. If you haven't, make efforts to experience the JOY of salvation and make Jesus your LORD, you'll be happy you did. Seek a quiet moment in the busyness of the season to meditate on the depth of LOVE that made a man choose death penalty; not for his own sins but for yours and mine. That's what Jesus Christ did for us. Choose to discover in this Christmas, the benefits that are yours when you receive the Father's Gift of LOVE. 

Understand how to grow in the LOVE of Christ and refuse to mark the same love spot you

have always been in the previous years. Avoid those activities that leave you exhausted and wondering if Christmas is all about food, trees, balloons, ribbons and lights bulbs. Let true LOVE happen in your heart. Stay away from mindless movies of sinful moments. Control your appetite for food and pleasures when eating and drinking with friends and family especially if these will make you sick afterwards.

Have a MERRY Christmas; Leave the Go-Rounds.