Christmas or Control?

Christmas or Control?

Since truth is often self-deprecating, the following won’t be an exception: 

I learned the hard way that I could choose: 

“Christmas or Control.”

Honestly, I used to prepare for Christmas around October. I would start a list and began to check it off, so that by December I would be in control and ready to decorate. 

Christmas decorating used to be my favorite thing to do. Year to year I would snap photos of the way that I decorated the year before so that everything was just so. That is… until I had a “few” back surgeries and couldn’t get out of bed.

As a gift, a group of sweet ladies came to my house, pulled out all my Christmas boxes and began decorating my entire house without me. 

Overhearing: “No, let’s not use that.” “Oops!” “Hey, can you grab the other end of this?” “Should we nail it to the wall?” Hammering sound. A bunch of laughter – made me feel nervous and out of control!

Lying in that bed, unable to walk without aid, it slowly dawned on me: I could choose to receive this great gift or I could choose control, but I couldn’t choose both. 

“Christmas or Control?” Which will it be? 

Less than an hour later, a few of the ladies helped me from bed and my eyes beheld a winter wonderland – the most warmly and tastefully decorated my home had ever been! 

Refraining from shouting, “I choose Christmas!” my eyes welled up with tears and I thanked them all. 

As they say about human revelation, it is simply “old news happening to new people.” So I was not the first, nor will I be the last to recognize that everyone must choose Christmas or Control.

LONG before we ever came along, the FIRST people involved in the FIRST Christmas, knew that they also had to choose.

Mary and Joseph knew it: Try giving birth in a feeding trough. 

(Luke 2:7)

The Wise Men knew it: Using On-Star can make you late.

(Scripture infers the wise men finally saw Jesus in a house, missing his birth by 40 days - 2 years! Luke 2; Matthew 2)

The Shepherds knew it. Try not to freak when you see a glowing angel.

(Luke 2:9)

And thus the first Christmas gathering looked something like this:  A bunch of animals stood around the feeding trough, the hoity-toity people were late and the plain folks were initially concerned that it all may get too “religious.” (Sound familiar?)

But joy over the birth of the Messiah prevailed over the need to control!

So 

today, 

if you haven’t, 

you must choose:  

CHRISTMAS OR CONTROL

?