Christmas doesn’t come quietly. It brings parties, meetings, service planning, deadlines, and late nights. Then, there are the additional responsibilities of tree trimming, baking, shopping, wrapping, budgeting, and cleaning. What began as a holy night has turned into an exhausting season.
But Christmas has never come quietly. A baby’s cry split through a silent night and ripped open the heavens for a chorus of angels proclaiming the night was holy indeed. “Rejoice!” they sang.
Rejoice? How do you rejoice when seasonal demands leave you weary? How do you live out Galatians 6:9, “And let us not grow weary of doing good…” when you just can’t do one more thing? You are weary right through to the bones.
Christmas isn’t about making the hard seem jolly and bright
God’s call on ministry leaders to sacrifice self in service to others is costly, and Christmas often demands more from us than most weeks on the calendar because Christmas is when the broken-hearted feel their losses more deeply. Christmas is when those with shredded insides need a friend. It is when those missing loved ones need someone to remember. It’s when ministry families feel the pressure of needing to have all the answers. It is for all those in desperate need of a God familiar with soul-crushing brokenness to take from them their weary weight and empower their weary soul to lead other weary souls to rejoice.
Empowered by the Spirit
In Galatians 5 Paul first writes of the power to live in the Spirit before he writes about doing good to those who are of the household of faith (chap 6). Paul writes at the end of Galatians 5, if we live by the Spirit let us also walk by the Spirit – which is living and walking empowered by the Spirit and keeping in step with Him. God provides us with his strength through the power of his Spirit.
Isn’t this the message of Christmas? The flesh wrapped Deity in the manger is God’s perfect provision to save people who could not save themselves. Today, the Spirit of God dwells in us. This flesh wrapped Deity in the temple of our bodies has a strength that never runs out. When we keep in step with him, he provides all we need to “not grow weary of doing good.”
Christ has come, and the weary soul can rejoice. The weighty pressure for that perfect Christmas is exchanged for this perfect gift from God: life empowered by his Spirit.
Rejoice!
Pause the parade of holiday events to kneel at the manger and follow that baby’s footsteps to the cross. Rejoice! Your Saviour entered your weary world, lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death, and rose to life—forever beating death and darkness. Rejoice! He came for you, he knows your needs and offers you the gift of regeneration through his Spirit. Rejoice! Your Saviour will come again to right every wrong and wipe every tear. Until then, rejoice!
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