Christmas thoughts...

I've been reading the book of Galatians this month and last night I read again what God has designed for us to be....filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The bad news is that this doesn't describe me and I know that I am incapable of being all this. I may be able to fool you if you don't look too close. But I can't fool myself and I certainly can't fool God.

The good news is that someone did exemplify all of that in his life. And it isn't Mohammed. It wasn't Joseph Smith. There is only one person who ever lived a perfect life and his name is Jesus. Many think that Jesus was a good man but in the same category as all religious 'prophets' and 'gurus'. But if we strip him of perfection and sinlessness, we strip mankind of hope.

You see we are all flawed and no amount of education will change that. I can aspire to be all that Galatians describes and read the list as many times as I like but I just can't be all of that all of the time. I can have the very best of intentions and be sincere about it but I will still fail.

But God knew that and He was willing to do something about it. And that's what Christmas is all about. He knew that only He could provide the way for us to be made right. The miracle of Christmas is that God became one of us. And the world didn't know what to make of Him. It still doesn't. We hated His perfection. We were uncomfortable being shown up for what we really are. We resented Him. And so we killed Him. We tried to get rid of Him once and for all. We're still trying to get rid of Him. But still the offer is open.

God offers us an amazing gift beyond any other Christmas gift we could ever receive. He offers us a life marked by the characteristics in Galatians - we just have to accept it and yield our lives to Him so He can fix the things that are broken in our lives. And if we do, the most amazing thing of all is that He then considers us His children and we become heirs! Now that's an inheritance worth getting excited about! May your Christmas holidays be filled with love, joy and peace and more importantly may you have a relationship with the only One who can fill our lives with every good thing.