Wrapping Paper

There is nothing more irritating when you have given someone a present, than watching them open it  r-e-a-l-l-y   s-l-o-w-l-y. 

 

You know what it is that you've bought them and you're excited to see their face when they unwrap it, but the longer it takes them to get into the present, the more irritating it becomes.

 

I remember a friend telling me several years ago how his nephews had been more interested in the wrapping paper that their Christmas presents had been wrapped in, than the actual presents themselves.  As soon as they had unwrapped their gifts, they had screwed up the wrapping paper to make a football and spent longer playing with that than they did with their gifts.

 

When it comes to Christmas, sometimes we can get distracted by the 'wrapping paper' too - the extra bits that the real Christmas message is wrapped in.

 

You hear people saying Christmas starts at home, or Christmas is all about family.  We focus on the gifts and the decorations and spending time with loved ones and eating a lot and drinking a lot and watching TV and going to parties and going to nativity plays and carol services.

 

And these things are all good.

 

But they are only the wrapping paper.  They are only the packaging for the real message, the real gift of Christmas.

 

These things are all good, but they cannot save us, or bring us life.

 

Only Jesus can do that.

 

“And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins [...] 

        Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
        She will give birth to a son,
        and they will call him Immanuel,
        which means ‘God is with us.’”

 

       [Matthew 1:21, 23 NLT]

 

 

Let's not let ourselves get distracted by the wrapping paper and the 'packaging' this Christmas.  Let's look beyond the food and the drink and the decorations and the parties and the church services.  Let's look beyond it all and peer into the crib, until we can see the tiny baby who came to save our world.