Today's Devotional

December 6, 2004

Subject:  Confusing The Savior With The Santa

James 1:17 - "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

Last week a coworker came into the office and was asking who watched "Rudolph."  Evidently the show had run the night before.  No one had watched on that night, but of course everybody's seen Rudolph, either as a child or many times since as an adult.   The coworker then went on to talk about a part of the show where Santa had been unduly harsh on the elves and the reindeer.  She didn't remember Santa being like that as a child.  She went on to say, he's supposed to be kind and loving and forgiving.  Without thinking, I immediately blurted out to her, "No, you're confusing Santa with Jesus."  I then went on for a few seconds about how Santa ties his gift-giving to whether you've been naughty or nice and he keeps a list and checks it twice, but not Jesus.

I do not believe the coworker knows Jesus, but sadly, that's also the way many believers view Jesus.  Many think that He's in heaven keeping score to see if we will get in or that He's poised to reward us for something good we've done and then holding back when we've done something bad.  That misinterprets the entire story of Christ on the cross.  

The fact is that the gift He gave there was the one unconnected to anything at all that we'd done except "being bad."  For all of our  wrongdoing, God gave us the greatest gift imaginable and that was the gift of eternal life through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.  So remember this Christmas, that besides Santa being overweight and out of shape which Jesus is not, the biggest key difference is that the truly perfect gift from above was not because we were being good, but because God simply loved us and He didn't have to check His list to determine that.

 Carlen