The cause of Christmas

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It’s Christmas morning.

The B99 and I are up before the kids, and I’m drinking coffee, sitting at the computer, and writing as a candle burns.

It’s still, and stillness is good for thinking.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Jesus is the reason for the season. It’s a catchy line that is true, and when Christians get a hold of a true statement that is easy to remember, they market it like nobody’s business.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing because He really is the reason for the season. Shoot, He’s the reason for every season. In fact, many people’s lives make no sense because they’ve bypassed the reason. When Jesus is the center of our lives, everything somehow, over time, begins to make sense.

But that isn’t what I wanted to write about because we all know the reason for the season. But do we all realize the cause of it?

Why did there need to be a Christmas in the first place? It isn’t something that we like to think about as we sip our Christmas blend and listen to Perry Como on Spotify, but Jesus came on that first Christmas morning because of my sin. And yours.

We are the cause of Christmas. In the perfect world that God created, there would have never been a season that needed a reason! And yet, the awe-inspiring truth around this day is that the God who made the world sent His Son into that world to fix the mess we’d made of the world.

He has come for lost causes like you and me. For people everywhere who find themselves wandering far from home and wondering how they got there. That good news shines brilliantly against the bad news of our sin and rebellion.

My prayer on this Christmas morning is that you would allow it to shine more brightly in and through you than it ever has before.

“The world lay silent beneath a cloak of sin

Until the light of God shone in

His name is called Emmanuel

For with us God to come to dwell.”

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

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Written by Paul Jenkins
Paul Jenkins is lead pastor of The Gathering, a community church located in beautiful downtown Albemarle, North Carolina. He's the author of God is My Air Traffic Controller and My Name's Not Lou. Paul is passionate about his wife, his 3 children, running, reading, coaching, leading people who are following Jesus, Swedish Fish and the Carolina Panthers.