November 17, 2010
Holiday Cheer
I’ve never been happy with retailers pushing Christmas forward to extend the shopping season in order to make more money. This year Christmas decorations were selling even before Halloween was over. It’s just dawned on me that maybe my angst is wrong. Maybe I should be embracing the extended Holiday season. Retailers have lengthened the Christmas season, which includes the public display of Jesus, from 30 to 60 days…something believers could never have accomplished. God does have a way of taking bad situations that we think are bad and making them good. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done...” (Gen 50:20 NIV)
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Gail;
-----Most things we do are not all good and not all bad. So, as good as we think we may do something, there is almost always someone around who is able to point out some bad about it. And that is not bad, it is just real. I liked the Christian Church’s practice of weekly communion. I felt it important to pay that recognition to the Lord and to my brothers and sisters every time we assembled for worship. Others said weekly observance diminished the reverent aura of communion by its repetition causing desensitization. In one heart maybe it worked that way, but in another heart maybe it lent to a weekly building upon an ongoing theme of fellowship principal emerging within that heart over a more extended period of time. One can go through the entire list of Christian practices and behaviors with the same kind of analysis and observe this same principle. Of charity, even some note the possibility of enabling some irresponsibility causing the poverty of the recipient. Maybe such is very true of some recipients, yet totally untrue of others, and partially true of the rest, to one extent or the other. Conversely, the same can be noted about things done badly, or even bad things done - if one is careful to not use that as an excuse to actually do bad.
-----Multitudes of companies make and distribute merchandise directly targeting the Christmas Season. I place my bet upon the majority of them being interested in profits more than supplying the season with good cheer (and please do not take that to mean profits are all bad, the same principle applies to them.) But I would place an even bigger bet upon the possibility that there are more than just a few companies, maybe very small ones, whose goals for this part of the year are specifically to serve the celebration of Jesus’ birth. There are many Christian owned and run businesses in our economy. So I agree with your conclusion about the Christmas shopping season, while making this small adjustment: God does have a way of taking situations for good even though we take them to be bad. Jesus was once harangued for associating with tax collectors and sinners.
-----And of course, there are good cultural characteristics having at least a small degree of bad effects, and some bad ones having at least some good effects. One can categorize the Christmas Season as one or the other, but must always be honest enough to admit the fact that whichever way he categorizes it, it does carry some effects of the other category as well. I still categorize the commercial activity of the Season as good, while recognizing the degrading effects. It supplies celebration, yet it disrupts reverence. So I respond by engaging the supply it provides while deliberately being all the more reverent.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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