You Can't Stop Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2015

Christmas Meditation     “You Can’t Stop Christmas!” Pastor Jacqueline Hines

How blessed we are on this Christmas Eve to be in the House of God. Our name “Bethel” actually means “House of God in the Hebrew language.”  We are the family of God and with a family as wonderfully blessed as ours, Christmas is unstoppable.  

For the family of God, Christmas is all year round. Throughout the year we share and care and serve and learn and grow until we are strong enough to change and be more like the one who created us. With a family as wonderfully blessed as ours, you can’t stop Christmas.  

The little drummer boy did not stop his journey toward Jesus just because he had no gift for the Christ child. He simply honored God with what he had – his musical talents. That familiar Christmas carol, Little Drummer Boy was written by a Czechoslovakian and recorded by the Von Trappe family from Germany.

You may also remember that the song Jingle Bells was written in, of all places, a Massachusetts Tavern, by a church music director who may have been filled with the sauce. James Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells as a Thanksgiving Song to remember the pleasant sounds of bells on the horse’s harness during a peacetime journey.   We use his song as a Christmas song because Christmas finds a way into our lives from -  more places and people than we can imagine.

Christmas comes to remind us to keep the Christ in Christmas, to be just as busy getting ready for the coming of Christ in our daily lives as we are busy getting ready for Christmas. After all, whose birthday is it anyway? If you are looking for the best gift to give to the King, give him your whole life. We are better off in the hands of God than we are on our own.  

Let this Christmas be a time when we give ourselves completely over to the one who shaped us and molded us in our mother’s womb. Let the love of God sweep you off your feet, rock you in the cradle of his arms, heal your wounds, set your feet on higher ground, root you and ground you in a loving and righteous life that surpasses understanding. Let God’s unstoppable love flow in your life, because you can’t stop Christmas.   Amen.