Overdoing It

December 17, 2019

Advent at the Bailey’s can be a bit hectic. It’s not so much the shopping; for both of us, that’s been mostly done for months. It’s the special programs, concerts, and gatherings, added to which is the decorating (fortunately, we have willing grandchildren eager to help), volunteering for special service projects, and wrapping gifts. As Christ-followers, we get caught up in all of it. We sing “Silent Night” when it is anything but. We don’t replace one activity with another; we add one to another. It’s easy to get lost in the season, even as Christians, perhaps especially as Christians. Even when we are giving, the focus seems to be on doing...more, and more, and more.

But the whole meaning of Advent is wrapped up not in what WE do, but what GOD did and does. The Gospel asserts that “what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” (Romans 8:3). When we get too busy doing, it becomes too easy to neglect and fail to receive the Gift of God in Jesus Christ. Oh yes, we give lip service to him, eagerly and energetically working to do the things we believe he wants us to do, when what he wants most is that we worship him, and acknowledge him as the Centerpiece of all God is and does. 

Paul says it clearly in his letter to the Colossian Christians:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.” —Colossians 1:15-20 NKJV

Everything God does, he does through Jesus Christ, to the end that someday, “every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 210-11). 

Tonight, I am grateful for evenings like tonight when I stop the doing long enough to appreciate and give thanks for what has already been done for me in the gift of Jesus Christ.