It’s time to experience Christmas with a child-like wonder, faith and excitement.

Advent is marked by a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing. There is a yearning for deliverance …

 From now until Christmas our expectations are to be expanding. Someone is coming who is the answer to every need we have. The arrival of the Christ-child has never been more needed.

At the end of the weeks of Advent we are to figuratively explode with relief. The ‘hopes and fears of all the years’ are to meet their match in the Son of God. The crescendo of yearning gives way to the One who has the potential to satisfy everyone and every longing.

Are you as excited about the advent of Christmas as you were as a child? Have the traditions and expectations of decorating, hosting and giving made you anticipate Christmas for all the wrong reasons?

What shape will you be in when Advent delivers you to the door of the manger? What breathless wonder and anticipation will have evaporated under the heat lamps of commercialism? What tiny ‘baby-voiced’ message will have been beaten out by the shrillness of the marketer’s ads? Will the only ‘wonder’ left in you be the question of how everything will be paid for?

Don’t rush to see Christmas end, but instead sing every carol as if it’s the first time you’ve ever heard it. Listen to Luke’s account of the Nativity as if you’d never heard it before and treat it as it is … the Greatest Story Ever Told!

Kick cynicism and a ‘ho-hum’ attitude toward the curb as if the 2,000 year old story of Bethlehem is being told to you for the first time. Quit being a grown up about Christmas. Become a child again.

And absolutely don’t join the parade of dismal looking people who have lost their joy in living and hope to pass their depression your way. Instead, get in the parade of those reveling in the coming of the Savior … those whose steps are light, whose eyes sparkle and whose future is bright with possibilities.

Start now…get out of the rut of the non-religious agenda. Establish personal parameters of peace that will bring you breathlessly into His Birthday celebration … breathless over wonder and awe, not because of the hectic pace.

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace

to those on whom his favor rests.” Luke 2:14 NIV