Gift Giver

Spreading Kingdom Cheer For All To Hear

I wanted to lighten the mood and communicate some truth through this next piece entitled Santa. There are some really healthy concepts we can take from the fairy tale relationship society has with Santa that would be correctly applied to God. If this offends you, you should probably stop reading this and do something else that makes you happy. 🙂

Here we go. For some reason Santa always is depicted as the nice guy, he’s in a good mood! God, however, he’s the scary guy. He’s the mean, tight-fisted, we gotta perform for him to get us to love him guy. Santa on the other hand loves us all unconditionally. He doesn’t put anyone on the naughty list because he wants to, its just what he’s gotta do and that’s on you. God on the other hand sometimes get depeicted as delighting throwing people in a hell they deserve. That that kind of justice makes him happy inside. Mr. Cruel. 😦

Joy, abundance, generosity, celebration, warmth, comfort, safety, color, wonder, awe, love, and all those other things so many people associate with the idea of Santa and Christmas all come from God, that king born in a manger. He’s the guy that’s not a stubborn, boring, unfriendly stoic savior. He nice. And not only that, he’s funny. He’s understanding and patient. He likes you and enjoys your company. He delights in your creation and is full of wonder of the person you are becoming. He looks forward to time with you and believes in you more than you believe in yourself.

Stickler

When it comes to giving Santa’s reputation far exceeds Gods. When it comes to getting something from God, I picture intercession, fasting, declaration, and sacrifice. When I picture getting something from Santa, all you have do is tell him and sometimes he just knows because he’s that good and nice! And he always wants to know and give us what we desire just because he’s that awesome!

In my dreams I sometimes have Christmas dreams. I know God is revealing himself to me as the generous giver of glorious, wonderful gifts. He’s doesn’t mind the correlation when it raising our expectations of receiving good things from him. He loves giving good gifts to each of us. It brings him delight.

People always depict Santa as being for us! He’s on our side, but God, sometimes he likes us, sometimes he likes us less, or at least that’s what people believe! I’m sorry to say this but Santa didn’t die for you. He didn’t need to because Christ already did. If Santa died for you, he would have died, but you would still have needed an incarnate savior. Santa doesn’t possess within his endless resources the gifts we truly need in this life.

We never question where Santa gets his funding or what his real motives are for all of this generosity. We never wonder if he has enough resources or enough gifts that pertain to our specific desire. Availability is never questioned.

What’s In His Bag?

For some reason we put limits on gifts from God especially when it pertains to ourselves. God can’t possibly have enough joy for each of us, can he? I don’t really deserve that much joy? There obviously isn’t enough peace for my enemies and me, is there? I can’t possibly have peace and health today if I had it yesterday, right, I mean, that’s just not the way God works right? What does God want from me, what is he trying to do, is he just going to take this thing that I like away? We never just reason that God’s good to us because he’s good.

I’m not talking about God giving us plastic junk (not that he can’t communicate love to us through those things). I’m talking about our lives being filled with abundance of his goodness and our hearts overflowing with heaven’s wonders. Goodness no price tag can buy and the stuff rich men long for, sometimes found in abundance among the poor.

I love the Christmas season. It is a tiny prelude to the abundance of heaven’s eternal warmth, goodness, love, forgiveness, togetherness, sparkle-y-ness and generosity. Merry Eternal Christ-season.