“I’m not excited for it,” I told my friend. “In fact, I could probably more so cry about it than laugh about it.” My friend and I were walking and talking about the Christmas season. Yes, it’s December. Inevitably, Christmas is {insert number of days} away, but I’m not excited about it. (I know, right?) What once was a building of excitement in my heart has been rendered void. I don’t want to be a Scrooge, but I have been overtaxed in the area of “holiday cheer.”
Countdown Christmas clocks, loud blaring music, red and green lasers streaking through the trees and sky. Everything shines too brightly, like the fluorescent lights in a doctor’s office, and I just want to shut my eyes and go to sleep. Even with Baby Boy’s first Christmas approaching, I want to close the door on everything the world calls Christmas.
And I think through why I might feel this way.
As I look around me, I see how the world is preparing for the “day” of Christmas. Toys are being marketed and haphazardly purchased and pictures with Santa are being taken and distributed. The marketing world is forcing Christmas into a gift box, stuffing anything messy and divine inside, wrapping the whole day up with a store-bought bow.
Instead of letting the season of Christmas come in like a silent night causing hearts to open and stir, the world is screaming at me to just go through the motions. Decorating my Christmas tree will bring back my feelings from childhood or filling my advent calendar with activities will muster excitement from somewhere in the depths. The Christmas season has got my mind spending (I mean, spinning?), and I haven’t had time to reflect on the best gift given.
But a phrase,
waking me up in the middle of the night,
causing my mind to repeat and repeat and repeat until I am blue in the face.
A simple phrase I can’t ignore, and yet I haven’t embraced as God is whispering to me:
Prepare
Him
room.
I feel like Jack Skellington from “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” screaming, But what does it mean??
The Great Banquet
In the parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14:15-24), Jesus speaks of a man who is preparing a wonderful banquet for all of his friends. I imagine the man is aflutter and overjoyed at how he can bless his very closest friends. He is getting all the preparations made, ordering the food, making the guest list, and thinking about the decorations for the party. It makes ME excited even thinking about attending a party such as this. But as the man’s RSVP’s come back, it seems everyone he invites, all of his friends, can’t make it. They provide excuse after excuse after excuse.
I’m booked for all of December, they say. Maybe in the new year we can get together and just talk. I’m just too tired. I don’t have the time to have a quiet time anymore.
And then I think about God, precious and holy, most graciously preparing a banquet just for me. He is so in love with me and wants to bless me mightily, but I’ve become so busy (in my mind and my heart). I hold every excuse imaginable to decline the invitation to the finest event of the year.
I cry to myself as I write this; What am I doing?
In the Christmas song “Joy to the World,” the singer asks that every heart prepare Him room. How can my heart prepare to invite Him in when I am not focused on Him? When I am more focused on the instant gratification of this world than on the gift that makes me perfect: Jesus.
How can I prepare Him room?
When you prepare to give Jesus room in your heart, he doesn’t mean for you to become perfect, cleaning up cobwebs from every corner and shoving all the clutter under a couch. He doesn’t ask that I wait until I’ve got everything together before inviting Him in. He wants to sit and talk with me now, as I am, infiltrating my entire heart, body, and soul. Loving my whole heart, even as I sit with Him in my messy room. But He asks that I invite Him, prepared or not.
As you take a moment to reflect on your own Christmas season, here is a song from an album I play on repeat during the Christmas season. I hope you enjoy listening to it.
Here is a prayer as you take some time to slow down and prepare for the coming of Christ.
