Christmas in Cambodia looked a little different. Christmas was everywhere, 50 cents Santa hats lined the streets and restaurant windows glowed with Christmas trees and lights. For a country that is primarily Buddhist, Christmas was all around…or so I thought.
Like many of my teammates, I had never been away for Christmas. I have always celebrated in the comfort of my home with the ones I love. We have traditions that we hold close and we celebrate throughout the whole month of December.
With Christmas surrounding me, this was a year without true Christmas.
As I lay in a room with Christmas lights, banners, stockings, and wreaths; I struggle to figure out what is missing. Being away from my family was not easy and homesickness set in real hard, but that still wasn’t it. Yes I wasn’t at my home this Christmas, but I was home with my new team that is becoming family.
Reality soon set in for me and I began to realize that I missed the whole point. I was so caught up in my head trying to make this Christmas feel like Christmas, that I dropped the ball altogether. I spent the week leading up to Christmas worrying about my wants and what would make me feel most at home and I ultimately forgot about the real meaning of Christmas.
I had pushed Jesus to the side and that is a tough pill to swallow.
It’s our Savior’s birthday and I dropped the ball trying to comfort myself.
Christmas is more than santa.
Christmas is more than being with family.
Christmas is more than Jesus being born.
Christmas is everything because without Jesus coming into the world, he could not have had the chance to die for us on the cross, and we would not have the opportunity to be saved.
This Christmas I was fighting to not let it just be an ordinary day, but in the end I found that many things about Christmas are ordinary. Yes the Lord coming to earth to die for our sins is nothing but ordinary, but if you look at the details, our Father loves using the ordinary.
Mary is an ordinary 15 year old girl engaged to be married.
Joseph has an ordinary job like many other men as a carpenter.
Bethlehem is an ordinary small town that at this time many people had never heard of.
The Lord could have had Jesus come to earth through people of power and he could have had all of this happen in a prospering city at the time, but he didn’t. Our Father isn’t just the God of the elite, he is the God of ordinary man.
Jesus didn’t come to earth to die for the elite, he came to earth to die for you and me. Although Christmas day has come and gone, the season isn’t over. The celebrating can continue.
Let’s all take time to celebrate what Jesus didn’t when he was alive on this earth.
Let’s celebrate the promises he fulfilled.
Let’s celebrate our salvation.
