This Christmas

Me - Personal Story

Christmas is my favorite season. I love the decorations and the food. I love the month break from school I get. But I also love the family traditions we do.

On of the many family traditioms we do is, we dont actually celebrate Christmas on Christmas day. In Germany, Christmas is on December 24 so we do the big celebrating a day earlier than all the rest of you.

Mayber your guys favorite part of Christmas is different than mine but I think we can all agree that our least favorite part is getting one of these as a gift.

We - Tension

Whether you get an unwanted Christmas gift like those or the gift you were hoping for, one thing is true: Christmas is a holiday where we talk a lot about giving and being generous.

Most of us are on the receiving end of generosity and someone gave us the perfect gift.

Maybe we are on the giving side. Maybe your school does a food or toy drive or your parents make you clean out your old toys and clothes and give them away. Either way giving what you have away and doing it with a kid, open, and generous heart seems to be the theme of the season.

While giving is a great to do sometimes being generous with our time and money doesnt always feel awesome. Sometimes it can just make us feel shame or fustration. Like when you give someone a gift and they dont like it. Or maybe you heard all this talk about giving, and you know it’s what you’re supposed to do. But truthfully, it’s not what you want to do.

So when it comes to generosity this Christmas, how do we get excited and feel good about giving?

God - Truth

We can look to the Bible for that answer because it talks all about generosity. God doesn’t just talk about generosity; He gave us the ultimate example of what generosity looks like. One of the most beautiful themes of the Christmas story is God’s generosity towards us.

Maybe you have heard the story if not it goes like this. There was girl named Mary had a baby named Jesus. That guy on the And there where some sheperds. A while later a few wisemen. A whole lot of animals. But there is someone missing from this picture and who is overlooked in this story.

See we have a habit of taking God’s gifts to us for granted. It’s a habit we’ve had since the beginning. God’s first generous gift to us was His beautiful creation of theworld—this originally-perfect place for us to live. But Adam and Eve, the first humans to ever live, made a choice that broke that perfect creation. It hurt their relationship with God, their relationship with others, and their relationship with themselves. And we inherited all of that brokenness. We sometimes make bad choices like they did. Those kinds of choices we refer to as “sin,” and it’s the kind of stuff that separates us from God’s loving and perfect gifts. It separates us from Him.

Us - Application