Got this from one of my favorite blogs from the Village Church.
Written by Matt Chandler.
It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving, and we’re already into the
holiday season full throttle. The lights are already up, Christmas music
is playing, people are talking about gift ideas, and the commercials
have started. It’s on. And some of us didn’t even have the decency to
wait for Thanksgiving to be over before we coated every surface in
tinsel and fake snow. The “Christmas season” seems to start a little
earlier every year.
As a culture, we’re drawn to the whole holiday thing, and I’m no
exception to that. I’m not full-on Clark Griswold, but we’ll decorate
our house, put up a tree and hang stockings. The Chandlers love all the
trappings of Christmas.
But despite all the decorations and parties, not everyone enjoys the
season. People get the “Christmas blues,” finding the holidays to be a
time when they’re particularly vulnerable to
depression
.
And then there’s the “Christmas hangover.” It’s not the one caused by
too much eggnog; it’s the one that hits after the presents are opened,
the stockings are empty, and the meal is over. We find ourselves
thinking, “That’s it?”
The Christmas blues and the Christmas hangover both happen when unbridled expectations slam into reality. They
happen any time we build up an expectation for something that it can’t
possibly meet. We have plenty of help building these expectations—radio,
television, Pinterest and people’s perfectly filtered Instagram posts
all feed our inflated idea of what the Christmas holiday can deliver.
They paint the picture that our loneliness will be turned into joy and
that the gift we want so badly will ultimately satisfy.
These expectations can’t possibly be met. Sometimes the holidays
don’t bring families together. Or, they bring families together just to
let a grenade go off among them. Sometimes you get everything you want,
and still that nagging, empty feeling is there. Sometimes the season is
terribly lonely because you have lost a loved one. Unbridled
expectations slam into reality.
Separating Substance from Shadow
In
Colossians 2:16-17,
Paul says, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of
food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to
Christ.” Paul is saying to the churches in Colossae that feasts and
festivals are good, but they’re just a shadow of the greater truth of
Christ. They’re not the substance, He is. You can’t get your arms around
a shadow. You can’t be comforted by a shadow. It takes the substance to
do that.
This doesn’t mean that we are not allowed to enjoy the shadow. We
don’t need to rail against stockings and lights. We just need to
recognize that those things are a shadow. By all means, have fun with
the shadow, but ultimately, go after the substance.
If we go through this holiday season and aren’t made more aware of
Jesus, then we have failed our own hearts, we’ve failed our own
families, and ultimately there’s nothing left except to be disappointed.
This is why, as a church, we take time each year to illuminate the
substance of the Christmas season by observing Advent. Advent gives us
the chance to press hard into the fact that God has made promises, God
has kept those promises, and Christ has put on flesh and dwelt among us.
We want to get our minds, our hearts and our arms around the substance,
not at the expense of the shadow, but so that we learn to find our joy
in what’s casting the shadow in the first place.
Change Your Focus
Set your heart and mind on the substance, not the shadow.
By turning your attention onto the Word Made Flesh, you’ll be able to handle the weight of this season. By
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, all of
a sudden the stress of the holidays lessens because our focus is where
it should be.
You won’t go into the kind of debt that you normally do because
you’ll realize everything you’re buying is of temporal significance. You
won’t feel the pressure to buy affection from your kids because you’ll
feel the weight of imparting to them what’s actually glorious.
You'll begin to understand that our longing and our eager
anticipation for Christmas morning is what we should feel—but do not
feel—for Christ and His return. You'll begin to get drawn into the
substance that will never disappoint like the shadow does.
When we focus our hearts on the fulfilled expectation of Christ’s
first coming and the glorious expectation of His second coming, the
“Christmas blues” and the “Christmas hangover” begin to lose their
power
over us. This holiday season, ask the Holy Spirit to help you learn to
keep your eyes fixed on Christ. By all means, put up the tree, play the
carols, and eat the big meal. But don’t set your hope on those things.
Enjoy the shadow, but find satisfaction in the substance.
