My husband and I took my mom and aunt to a Christmas show this week.  We were all eagerly anticipating a Christmas blessing.........but what we received was anything but a blessing.  Turns out that the Christmas show was not about Christmas........not the Christmas I know anyway.   The setting of the play was a bar and the main players were 3 female angels who talked of sex, homosexuality, abuse, drinking and the world's Christmas; not the Jesus Christmas but the Christmas of Santa, shopping, drinking and partying. 

 

Wow!  Were we ever disappointed.  It was a long 90 minutes, so hard to stay in our seats but the fact that we thought "it could get better any minute" kept us there in anticipation of a change in the direction of the show.   With about 7 minutes left, there was a change.  One of the Angels sang a couple of Christmas carols but, to be honest, by that point none of us wanted to hear them.  We'd had enough of the scantily clad women bouncing around in offensive ways that the carols just didn't ring true to us.  The women singing them obviously didn't believe what they were singing, just doing it to close down the show.  We listened in disappointment. 

 

On the way out the door, I picked up an evaluation form that was sitting in the theater with the intention of really giving my "opinion" on what I had seen that evening.   As I began to formulate how I "felt" about the lack of Jesus in the show, I wanted to say, "Do you even know what Christmas is about?"  As I began to write, God immediately convicted me and I crumpled the evaluation into a tight ball.   God was saying to me, "Maybe they don't know what Christmas is about.  Do you?"  Christmas is about sex, homosexuality, abuse, drinking, partying and the world's Christmas.  That's what Jesus is about.  That's why God sent Jesus down here to this earth, as a baby, to deal with all of these issues and more.  Maybe I don't struggle with these particular issues but there are issues that I do struggle with and Jesus came for my issues too. 

 

As I contemplated the experience this evening, God took me to Philippians 2:5-11 which says,  "Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:  who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross.  Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

 

That's the attitude I need to have.  Not the "greater than thou attitude I was feeling during that show," but the attitude of Jesus; making myself nothing, taking on the nature of a servant and humbling myself so that others may see that same "Jesus in me".  And that's the attitude I want to have so that those I encounter in life that don't know "the true meaning of Christmas" will be able to see "the true meaning of Christmas" in me!  To God Be The Glory!