We are all pulling out the trees, putting up the lights, hanging the stockings, and decorating the mantels.  It is officially the Christmas season.  As we drive down street at night more and more homes are adorned with lights.  Have you put yours up yet?  Has your tree made its appearance, filling your living room with color?  Are there any other decorations you put up during the holidays that you just love?

This year I am in my new house.  I put my Christmas village up in it’s brand new location, and I went and bought some brand new decorations for the living room.  The tree is out of storage and waiting to be put up.  All of the snowmen have been taken out of their crates and places around the house where they will stay for winter until the birdhouses reappear.  It definitely looks like Christmas in my home.

Looks–how many of us concentrate really hard on whether our homes look like Christmas?  Here is another more interesting question–does your home look like Christmas to God?  Good question, but what does Christmas look like to God?  To answer that question we must look at what Christmas is.  Christmas is a celebration of the very fact that Christ chose, of His own accord, to become flesh in order to die so that we might know forgiveness of sin.  Yes, that is what Christmas is about.  Christ’s choice to become flesh for us, and the celebration of that.  So, in order for Christmas to look like Christmas to God, He needs to see that celebration in us.  There is only way way that is going to happen, and that is if we know Christ.

So how does God see Christmas in us and in our home?  Through the very fact that we belong to Him, that we are saved by grace because He chose to come as flesh and die for us.  The celebration of Christmas is about that, and the rest of it, all the decorations, the tree, the lights, it’s all fringe.  All the fringe isn’t what pleases God at Christmas.  Sure it is pretty, but the beauty of Christmas is what God sees in us, and that is Christ who lives in us once we believe that He came to earth, died on the cross, and rose for us.  This Christmas enjoy the fringe, but celebrate what God sees in you.