12 Days of Christmas 2017 - Day 9: [Guest Post] Selflessness in the Christmas Season
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” croons an R&B singer over the worn loudspeakers. You’re in the middle of shopping at the department store to find gifts for your children and family. The song goes on to the next lyric – “toys in every store” – and you realize just how commercialized Christmas has become in modern culture. You stop shopping and consider what you’ve just heard in the light of Scripture as the singer, begins to list off several children’s Christmas wishes.
Your phone vibrates in your pocket with a notification, and you instinctively pull it out to check the slide notification that has popped up. It’s the Verse of the Day from that Bible website, and you glance at it. It’s Luke 12:15 from the NIV translation, which says:
Then He said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.
You look down at your shopping cart, and realize that nearly everything in it was demanded of you in moments of greed from your children. You feel an overwhelming sense of guilt, sensing that you have somehow let God down by succumbing to the world’s desire that you should spend all your money on greed and selfishness other than realizing God’s ultimate act of selfishness – to be tortured and murdered for people who did not appreciate him while he was among them. However, you also consider the fact that the giving of gifts is selfless: making other people happy and fulfilling their wishes.
You leave the store with a full shopping cart, but not of exactly what your children had demanded and wished for. You have gotten them all slightly different gifts, that they might still be satisfied, but also that you can explain to them why you didn’t get them exactly what they wanted. They will now have a chance to hear you out on what God has showed you in the department store today, so you put the gifts in the car and drive home considering God's selflessness and how you can become more like him.
Gabriel Brown is a teenage high-functioning sociopath who likes to write, read, and listen to way too much music. You can check out his blog at mindcitadel.wordpress.com.
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