Don’t look around, but you and every person around you knows what it means to wake up in the early morning hours trapped on that merry-go-round of worry, with it eating away at you, thinking that somehow if you just get everything fixed and in its place, everything will be fine. Yet it won’t happen, because there is always something else that comes at us sooner or later.
The fact is that, at some deep level, sisters and brothers, you and I need not a problem fixed but a person. And until you have that person, until that person has you, you’re on the merry-go-round, and you are stuck. The person needed is Christ, which is why I want to invite you to claim Psalm 27: 1: “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear?”
Last night when you went to bed and you were thinking about something you really needed in your life, were you thinking about Christ? Or were you thinking about something else? Who or what is your light and your salvation? Who or what is the source of your assurance? To take Psalm 27:1 seriously is to understand that if what you think you need is anything other than the Lord, you’re building your life on sand. “The Lord is my light and my salvation,” says the Psalm, and with that relationship in place, whom shall you or I fear?
There’s so much you want in your life, and I know that. It’s true for all of us. Just think, though. Don’t you know Joseph and Mary wanted so much also? Don’t you know how much they wanted a warm bed, a decent place to stay, friends and family around them as they made their way to Bethlehem? They didn’t get any of it. Yet one gift was given, wasn’t it? One gift was given, a gift so great it set the angels to singing, a gift so great we still celebrate it today. God gave himself.
What is the one thing you need most? God, and as you remember that and put the focus of your heart not on the problems you need fixed, but the person who comes to you at Christmas to enter into your heart with nothing less than the heart of God, I want you to know it sometimes seems to change nothing, but in fact, everything is different.
Moss Hart, in his day, was one of the great playwrights not only in North America but in the world. He was honored in cities and palaces, by presidents and kings and queens. Over the years he saw amazing Christmas celebrations. He would hear amazing music, go to amazing worship services, listen to amazing sermons, have amazing feasts, receive amazing presents. He had extraordinary experiences, which was why people were at first so surprised by the answer he gave once to a question about this season of the year.
Toward the end of his life he was doing an interview at Christmas time, and he was asked: What was the best Christmas he ever had? Immediately, without any hesitation, he said, “It was when I was 9 years old.” The people listening were stunned, because they expected him to say it was while he was in France or in Washington, D.C., or somewhere else magnificent. He said, though, his best Christmas was when he was 9 years old.
He went on to explain that as a boy he would go toward Christmas filled with fear, because he had not had a toy for Christmas in years. His parents were very poor. His father worked two jobs and sometimes a third, but could barely afford to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. So Christmas was a time of pain and even dread for Moss Hart, not excitement. But then, when Moss was 9, on Christmas Eve his father got back from his last job and said to Moss, “Let’s take a walk downtown.”
Moss got so excited. He was jubilant. First of all, his father was very distant. He had never learned how to express affection, and never went walking with Moss. They did not have that kind of relationship at all. Now, though, they were going walking! And they were walking downtown on Christmas Eve, which was where you went from the poor neighborhoods when you were going to get a toy.
Families from those neighborhoods could not afford to actually go in the stores, but downtown there would be vendors out on the street with carts. So when a family got the money together, they could go up to a cart, and a child would pick out a toy, the child and the parents together, and they would buy it. That was the ritual at Christmas for their community, and now, on Christmas Eve, Moss Hart was walking up to the carts with his father.
He was so excited. His feet didn’t even touch the ground. He was flying inside. He was going to get a toy for Christmas. They went up to the first cart, and his father asked about the things, and Moss said he would have given his eyeteeth for anything on that cart. They all looked wonderful. His father quietly fingered the things, the toys, and he asked about prices. Then he said, “Okay, okay. Well, we’ll look around.”
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