Christmas is just ten days away. Can you believe it? For the past several years, I've purposely tried to slow down the pace of my life during the Christmas season. I don't always pull it off to my satisfaction, but I know that if I don't make a concerted effort, it won't happen.
This year I'm finding it especially difficult to slow down. My writing business is demanding a lot of attention. So is my house (still working on decluttering it). And it's easy for me to say yes to too many Christmas related functions, but then simply view them as functions. For me, slowing down at Christmas partially involves turning my attention to the little things.
I love to drive by decorated homes with my 15 year-old niece sitting next to me. I enjoy making hot chocolate that I received as a gift (yes, it was this year…so it's not expired). I revel in the thought of turning on the lights on my Christmas tree and then sitting down in my recliner with a novel that has a Christmas-themed story line or a devotional book about the advent season. I like to open Christmas cards and have new photos or family Christmas letters fall out. I like to turn the lights down, light a candle, and put on soothing Christmas music. And I always look forward to continuing a tradition that a few of my male friends and I started a few years ago of meeting at a steakhouse and simply enjoying a good meal together.
Above all, I like to use this downtime to challenge myself to think about how the birth of the Christ-child is effecting the direction in which my life is headed. When Christ took on flesh in the form of a baby, he did so with one goal in mind—to die for your sins and mine, so that we might have eternal life. But his birth, and ultimately his death, isn't just about some period of time way in the future after our lives here are finished. Eternal life includes today.
R.C. Sproul has a column that is aptly titled "Right Now Counts Forever" in his monthly devotional magazine. When I listen to him speak, it's obvious that he has spent many years preparing himself for eternity. How different would our world look if everybody lived today knowing that it counted forever? And what better day than today—in the middle of the advent season—to begin doing so?
