Christmas and Christians…

My all-time favorite Christmas album is Trans Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Eve and Other Stories. Musically, it’s an amazing album in its own right. But it’s also a concept album, where the album tells a story…in this case, if you pay attention to the lyrics, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be tearing up by the time the song Old City Bar finishes. In that song, it wraps up the story with these lyrics:

If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last

By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
And to know who needs help
You need only just ask

We Christians can so easily get wrapped up in the cultural/societal/secular meanings of the holidays…or alternately, get so wrapped up in the ‘controversies’ of what secular people or companies (Starbucks red cup ring a bell?) that we miss it, and we miss the opportunity of the season.

One of the prophecies about the Messiah in the Book of Isaiah (9:2) is talks about the star (literally), but also about believers and what we could/should be in this world:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.

The thing about light in a dark place is that it does not have to be concerned with the darkness…by its very nature it dispels it. It doesn’t have to argue with it, or get offended by it, or get offended that the darkness is offended…it just needs to shine.

What are you doing this year to shine?

My all-time favorite Christmas album is Trans Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Eve and Other Stories. Musically, it’s an amazing album in its own right. But it’s also a concept album, where the album tells a story…in this case, if you pay attention to the lyrics, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be tearing up by the…