Like Believing in Santa Claus

 Do you believe in Jesus like you believe in Santa Claus?

 Or maybe you are like that little girl in the Meijer commercial, setting out her plate of cookies and milk in front of a perfect fireplace and Christmas tree while the voice says, ‘Believe. You have everything else.’  Are you missing your belief this Christmas season?

 You probably watched and sang along with the closing scene in the modern movie classic, Elf. You know, the one where Mary Steenberg is singing loudly off key as she and the assembled New Yorkers sing “You’d better watch out, you’d better not shout.’ Their singing, and the belief their singing represents, gets Santa’s sleigh off the ground just in time as they cause the ‘believe-o-meter’ to reach it’s critical point. 

 What is the ‘belief’ to which their singing points?  That they believe in the ideas that “Santa” represents, the ideas of kindness and sharing and love of people more than profit.  But I wonder, is that also a picture of how so many of us believe in Jesus and the Christmas story?

 We probably believe in the idea of a stable and an innkeeper and shepherds, and we relish the emotions tied to dark, starry nights. But is that it? Is that believing in Jesus? Or is that believing in Jesus just like believing in Santa Claus? Believing in Jesus is about believing in a person. A person who is God in human flesh. That is more than an idea. It is more than an emotion.

What gives flight to the angels wings and the shepherds feet on Christmas Eve is not a belief in sentimental thoughts but a belief that a long-promised, physical birth of Emmanuel, God with us, finally happened in Bethlehem.  To believe in that Christmas Story is to believe in a real birth, witnessed by only two people and a collection of barn animals, none of whom are talking.

 This Christmas Eve I invite you to consider with me whether you believe in Jesus, not like you maybe believe in Santa Claus, but like you believe in gravity, sunburn, electricity.  You cannot see those things happen, but you sure can see evidence they are real, right? Let us help you rediscover what you really believe. 

This Christmas Eve, worship the One in whom you believe.