Work Christmas party tonight. Free food and fizzy stuff.
The end of this year has found me decided cynical toward anything typically christmassy.
My 'automatic speech-assist word replacement utility'™ has been replacing all instances of the name 'Santa' with its more correct anagram, 'Satan'.
The insane amount of tinsel, stress and revenue that is generated at this time of year is ridculous.
Freakin' fat fellows in Coca-Cola costumes are sitting around in shopping malls to turn the hapless minds of poor disillusioned kids yet further from the true meaning of Christmas.
Why don't you all forget about the cheap toys that are broken and/or forgotten within weeks? Forget about the gluttony and grogging that gags the will and the mind.
Relax, flag the stupid shopping and have a wee bit of a think.
'Christ'mas is the time of year when we remember the birth of Christ. He who was without sin came into the world, to live a perfect life, and to become sin for us - suffering the punishment for our sins - separation from His loving Father.
His perfect life He offers to us, as a gift, that we might be clothed in His righteousness on that day when we all, each and every single last one of us, must stand before a Holy God and give account of our lives.
What are you going to have to say for yourself? Huh? ....just what are you going to say to Him?
'Well, I've been a been a pretty good person, and..' - nup - doesn't cut it.
'Well, I haven't killed anyone..' - no - sorry.
'I've kept the ten commandments...' - no you haven't, liar.
Unless you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ - a gift you have accepted from Him only - God will see only the sin staining your life completely, and will have no choice according to His justice and holiness than to cast you from His prescence for all of eternity.
'Hell' is not just a big pissup with all your mates and without some goody-two-shoes there to tell you that what you are doing is wrong. 'Hell' is separation from every single thing that is good - friends, family, tenderness, compassion, mercy, love, beer etc - the list goes on - for eternity.
If you don't have one already - get a life!!!!
Not your own life, but the perfect life of Christ.
So - when you grasp the true meaning of Christmas, the fat guys, the fruitcake, the frantic shopping stress, the barbeques, sun, sand and surf(in the southern hemisphere, anyway) all fade into pitiful insignificance.
First, get a life, and then you'll truly be able to enjoy the blessings of this life here on earth.
There.
