I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me. Proverbs 8:17
Christmas is worship.
I love what the Magi said in Matthew 2, “For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” More importantly, I love what they didn’t say. Nothing about asking. Nothing about receiving. Nothing about their own personal need or blessing. For the Magi, Christmas was not about “me, myself and I.” For them it was all about the One who had been born King of the Jews. From their experience from studying the stars and human nature, they knew something earth shaking and life changing was about to happen and they desperately wanted to be part of it. So much so they travelled hundreds of miles to find the answers to clues they found in the stars. They had one singular, solitary agenda in mind. Worship. Not a bad approach for us to take. Ultimately, Christmas is about the Christ. But amidst all of the decorations, gifts, and parties it is easy to lose sight of Him. So whether it’ your local house of worship or the quietness of your own heart, take a page from the Magi manual, and make time this Christmas to worship the Savior.
The story we tell at Christmas, has some very definite ideas about the goal of life, the purpose of human existence. Worship is not just another narcotic in an anesthetizing culture, or as Karl Marx once said, ‘religion is the opium of the masses”. For me, worship is my desire to listen to God, to see the dysfunction of our world and to desire to bring more joy than pain to the world. We begin with the assumption that many of us are in pain today, drifting, unhappy, unfulfilled, not because we have not tried to find pleasure direction, happiness and satisfaction, Lord knows we’ve tried. We are miserable because we have been looking for fulfillment in the wrong places, fulfilling our hungers with cheap nourishment attempting to base our lives on the lies rather than on the truth. We come to church empty and numb.
Worship is a natural response to God’s Extravagant Grace.
For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything. G. K. Chesterton
How will worship factor into your Christmas story?
There is no place I want to be on Christmas Eve other than in church.
It isn’t that there is no place that I would “rather” be on Christmas Eve because being in church on Christmas Eve is, for me, not an option as opposed to being somewhere else; being in church on Christmas Eve — the holiest of all nights — is a must for me; and when, as in some years past, I have not been able to, I find my absence from church leaves an unclosable void in my heart.
I am reminded of the quote which asks, “What if you had a birthday party for yourself and no one came?”
How could we not want to carry our candle-selves with the utmost joy in our hearts and place ourselves in church and on His birthday cake and gift ourselves back to Him as a way of saying to His Father, “Thank You for Your most amazing gift to us of Your ‘only begotten Son’ and for ‘becoming flesh to dwell among us’ in order to bring us home to the home where Your love wants us to be in an eternal relationship with You”?
How could we not, as your quote indicates, choose to humbly bow down and “worship God as a natural response to His extravagant and [most undeserved] grace”?
How could we not choose to come as did the Magi bearing gifts — the gift of ourselves — to “Christ, the Newborn King”?
You ask, “How will worship factor into my Christmas story?”
It is the most important aspect and the most important element of my Christmas story.
It is, for me, the heart and soul of my Christmas story.
It is my Christmas story.