My Thoughts on Christ at Christmas Time

This Christmas Season, I am reminded of a powerful and poignant story shared by a fellow college student just a year ago during one of our church meetings. I should hope that I never forget it. He told of the following:
It was Christmas time and his father was the manager of a prominent sporting goods store. An error which seemed to be deliberate occurred in the accounting practices of the store in which it appeared that someone had pilfered money as a sizeable portion of the store's revenue could not be accounted for. My college friend's father, who had no involvement in the fallacious accounting practices or pilfering was given an ultimatum. He could choose to deny any involvement and be fired for not accepting responsibility for the error, or he could falsely admit to being the author of the inauspicious plot, and face a mere reprimand and reproof from his superiors in the store's corporate leadership. To his son, this faithful man expressed, "I will not admit to something I did not do. I would rather my son know that he has an honest father than to have money for presents at Christmas time." He then expressed his undeviating confidence in the Lord, and told his son that he knew all would be well.
I share this story this Christmas season, because it so clearly illustrates a lesson so oft forgotten and so seldom remembered by so many each year as December approaches us. It begs the question, 'What is most important at Christmas time - the presents that mark our trees and fill our stockings, or the integrity that marks our name and the love which fills our hearts?'
I believe that we have become all too concerned with money at Christmas time. We need only remember that first Christmas, when there was no room in the inn, and the little Lord Jesus lay down in the hay. As was His birth, so was His life. The birds of the air had nests, the foxes had holes, but the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. He surely had power to amass more riches than any mortal man has known, yet was content with a few loaves and fishes, of which He always gave greatly more than He received.
And then in those final hours, Christ was scorned and persecuted by the world He would save. To the layman and commoner, Christ's mortal mission must have seemed an utter failure, a good man whose purported status as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, found no more than a deriding crown of thorns, and a burdensome cross for his throne. What seemed an utter failure by worldly standards was the greatest and most triumphant victory which the world has ever known and will yet know. Can any fully comprehend the loving restraint which was necessary for the greatest of all to be spit upon and suffer it, to be scourged and to suffer it, to be smitten and to suffer it? As a lamb before its sheares is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Amidst the most unspeakable suffering ever endured by any of God's children, Jesus did not so much as open his mouth in rebuke or protest. He who had power with three words to still the might tempest did not seek to still the hatred and bitter venom of the crowds that would crucify Him. He drank the bitter cup without becoming bitter. Legions of angels stood waiting to rescue Him, but he knew that even they, in all of their glory were powerless to rescue us. The Atonement of Jesus Christ was a one man mission, inaugurated by the selfless, sacrificial words of the Savior, "Here am I, send me." May we remember at Christmas time, that what the world esteemed as naught or failure, was a triumph more glorious than any mortal mind is capable of conceiving.
I believe that each of us who truly come to know the Master must sooner or later pass through the Garden's gate of Gethsemane and then approach the Golgothas of our lives. The moment will surely come when every knee shall bend and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. All will come to more fully appreciate the words of that great hymn, as we will be compelled to fall on our knees, and to hear the angels' voices. Perhaps then, we will either rejoice or lament the stirring admonition of the Savior, that "he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." The triumph can only come from the confidence we have that we have fought a good fight, that we have finished our course, and that we have kept the faith. Perhaps we think too little of this, and too much of money at Christmas time.