day 2649: Christmas in July

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

Yesterday, I was given the honor to speak at St. Andrew, Lutheran Church here in Rhode Island. At the two services, I delivered my message; “Why we need Christmas in July”.  Christmas in July has been around in the US since 1940 and has become something of a marketing and sales event since.  I was surprised to learn that the Hallmark channel shows continuous Christmas themed programming from July 12th through July 28th. Christmas in July is a big business for many companies and it is a reminder that if something can be commercialized, it will.  It doesn’t mean it should be.  It just means it will.

My message was that not only do we need Christmas in July, we need Christmas every day.  Christmas is the time when we celebrate that Jesus was born into our earthly life so that we could relate to Him and for Him to suffer beyond anything we could expect and to die an earthly death for us, for our sins, so that there could be His resurrection; forever cementing Him as God and Savior.  Christmas gives us hope that there is more than the pain and suffering that we go through during the July’s of our lives because if Jesus went through it and more, then there really is a beyond, and a future, and a reason to persevere through whatever life throws at us. It’s not easy to hold on to this during our roughest of times, but when Christmas resides in our hearts we can know that there is still the best to come.

Merry Christmas!

Reference: 2 Corinthians 4: 16-18 (New Living Translation)