As some of you may know, right now I am working two retail jobs: one at a clothing store and the other at a jewelry store. Christmas season is in full swing (which in fact it has been since the day after Halloween…), and “Christmas Cheer” is practically echoing off the walls of the mall complex. You can’t go anywhere in or around the mall without hearing one of many versions of our favorite Christmas songs blaring, and every store sign promises the “perfect gift” for the loved ones in your life. Traffic is backed up, and store lines are long, and if you’re lucky you may even see Santa as you’re moving from store to store with your list of gifts to buy. Add in the Starbucks Christmas drinks to fuel your holiday spirit, and you are good to go! Right?
Right?
Maybe. Maybe we are good to go. But maybe not.
I have had this growing feeling in my soul that something just isn’t right about this “Christmas” we celebrate. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus. And I love that God loved the world so much that he chose to send his one and only Son here so that we would believe in him and have eternal life. Those two truths will never change. But slowly, as I begin to scratch away at the shiny surface that we call Christmas I seem to be exposing an ugly hurt that would rather not be seen.
And then I start saying “Whoa, God…NEXT Christmas is supposed to be the crazy Christmas for me; the one where my American Christmas traditions and comfort won’t be accessible to me”. But God has something to teach me now. He doesn’t want to wait until the World Race. So, what the heck am I talking about? Stay with me.
Today an elderly lady came into the jewelry store where I work with her two sisters. She had a bag full of jewelry boxes in her hand, and my first thought: “Great. I get to clean this whole bag of jewelry. Great”. With shaking hands she begins pulling the pieces out one by one and I start examining them. There aren’t any markings on them, so I prepare to tell her nicely that we can’t clean them. My manager confirms that we can’t really help her so I go back over to let her know. That’s when she tells me that she understands, but if there was any way I could help her would I please do it. You see, her mother just passed away and this is the jewelry she wants to be worn for her burial…Ouch…I instantly felt the regret of my quick judgment and cold hearted assumptions. So I spent the next 20 minutes carefully inspecting and cleaning each piece of jewelry; making sure not to damage any of the unknown stones and metals; uncovering the precious metal that had seen 70 years of wear before finally being taken off. And with each piece, she told me what made it so special to her mom. And the pieces began looking new again. And it was beautiful. The whole thing was beautiful. For this one half hour out of my 55-hour work week, I wasn’t thinking about sales quotas, Christmas gifts, or how tired I was from standing on my feet all day. I hardly noticed the line of customers in the store waiting to purchase their next Christmas gift. And neither did this lady. As I finished the jewelry and re-boxed it for her so she would be able to take it to the funeral home, she began to cry. She rustled around her purse and tried to pay me for helping her; for caring. And as I refused to take her money, and assured her that it was thankfully part of my job, she was overtaken with emotion. She was so overwhelmed that someone took time out of their day to help her, to not just do their job but to really listen, and to care. She asked if it would be alright if she hugged me, and there I stood, hugging a lady I had never seen before in the middle of the store while customers were quite obviously wondering what in the world I was doing and when I would be done so that I could help them. And I too was overcome with emotion, and told her how blessed I was to be able to help her with something so special, and told her I was going to be praying for her and her family.
Now, I hope that story warms your heart as much as it did mine. I truly do. Now, you may be waiting for the standard metaphor of how this story is what Christmas is all about. Insert [Jesus is the Reason for the Season] here…I’m sorry, I’m going to have to disappoint.
Because while Jesus is the reason for the season, the reason for the season is Jesus. And the reason for Jesus is because we are all broken people living in a broken world and there is hope and love that only comes from Him who comes to make ALL things new. Today was a vivid reminder for me that we are spending so much time trying to show love to each other through gifts and decorations and cookies, that we are forgetting the actual love. We are simply painting a superficial surface over a deeper issue with our “holiday season”. It makes my heart want to sing think of a world that puts the same effort as we put into decorating our Christmas trees into loving other people; to caring for the broken; to healing the sick; to feeding the hungry; to caring for the orphans. I pray that we will stop focusing on the season, and more on the reason. That we would take a step back from our busy lives to care for others. Because when that begins to happen, when we begin to fix our eyes on Jesus instead of a holiday, hope begins to come alive and love breaks through the surface.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)
Thank-you, Jesus.
