The Only Way to Merry Christmas

By: Steve Huston

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” Proverbs 17:22

“MERRY CHRISTMAS!” How often will we either give or receive this greeting throughout the Christmas season? The question is, is it simply lip service? Do our tongues speak of merriment while our spirit is broken within? Do we know – really know – the “good medicine” of Christmas or are our bones, our framework, drying out?

As we encroach upon this Christmas season, there are those within the church and those on the outside who claim to know and understand who Jesus is. Yet for most, this Holy Child of the manger is little more than a fleeting thought, as the masses’ overarching focus is to purchase gifts or to think of the presents they might receive, attend parties, decorate, and mindlessly go through the routine of tradition, without considering why they do what they do. There is a veneer of merriment, but it’s little more than a placebo – no lasting effect that good medicine brings; their spirit remains broken. At the other end of the spectrum there are those who withdraw from all the festivities of Christmas with a “Bah Humbug” that would even put old Ebenezer to shame – same dry bones, same hurt, just no veneer.

Those superficial thoughts of Jesus and the Christmas movies that give a hat tip to the Christ child are not the same as knowing Him. Even to read through the Bible and consider Jesus’ miraculous acts; His traveling from place to place; His death, burial, and resurrection is not to know Him – that is to simply know about Him.

Dear reader, to truly know Jesus, one must experience Him, be transformed by Him. To know Jesus is to love Jesus. John 17:3 explains the importance of truly knowing God, to know and experience this Christ whom we celebrate this month: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

Yet, so many have settled for a superficial knowledge of Jesus – which is no knowledge at all. They bypass His splendorous beauty and misjudge Him as banal. Dallas Willard, in his book The Divine Conspiracy, explains what happens to a Christian culture and a nation “who believe they already understand him [Jesus]. In his case, quite frankly, presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance.

“Very few people today find Jesus interesting as a person or of vital relevance to the course of their actual lives. He is not generally regarded as a real-life personality who deals with real-life issues but is thought to be concerned with some feathery realm other than the one we must deal with, and must deal with now. And frankly, he is not taken to be a person of much ability.”  (p. xiii)

The people of Jesus’ day saw Him as anything but mundane and boring. The sick and demon possessed would flock to Him; the blind and leprous would cry out to Him; multitudes would gather to hear Him teach; even Christ’s enemies sought ways to trick, disparage, or kill Him. Loved or hated, He was seen as a force to be reckoned with, an extraordinary man who was transforming the ordinary by pointing them to Father God. Even in Jesus’ birth, a night like any other was transformed into angelic disruptions, shepherds’ proclamations, and a mother’s musings as the Saviour was brought forth and laid in a humble manger. Eastern kings came to worship the Christ child and at His birth Herod and all of Jerusalem were troubled. Though the nativity’s “fanfare” was over, Jesus’ influence and spectacular interjecting into the lives around Him was not…Indeed, IS NOT!

Sin’s reward is a broken spirit that dries out our bones; it’s because of “profound ignorance” that people bypass Jesus, searching for love and cures in all the wrong places, in all the wrong things, and in all the wrong people.

Jesus is much more than the “reason for the season;” He puts the merry in Merry Christmas. He “doeth good like a good medicine;” Jesus is the Christmas Cure for a broken spirit. He alone makes the heart truly merry.

One of my girls’ favorite Christmases was when I made a scavenger hunt for them to find their gifts – they had to seek, but not blindly. They were given clues in poem form to follow. Each clue would lead them to a present or another clue. They sought; they found; they enjoyed the experience. God has promised us through the prophet Jeremiah: “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” This season, search out the Christmas Cure; seek Christ through prayer, Bible study, and devotions. Experience Jesus and truly know Him by trusting in Him, walking in obedience to that which you find in the Scriptures. Let us seek, find, and enjoy the experience. That is how to have a merry heart and a Merry Christmas.

 

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