Christmas Card Veneer

Melody and I sat down a few days ago to create the Christmas card we'll send out this year. We use one of those photo printing websites, where you can upload a carefully selected picture with some text printed alongside. In order to make it easier, the website has hundreds of templates to choose from, with all sorts of possible styles and verbage.  Each one had a sample picture of some gorgeous couple or beautiful bunch of smiling kids.  Some were frolicking on the beach, or playing in the snow, or any number of idyllic settings.  Everything looked perfect and lovely.  Splashed across the side were phrases like "Peace, Love & Joy" and "Ho Ho Ho."  One read "Merry Everything/Happy Always."

I'm not trying to bag on Christmas cards (we are sending one, after all). But I wonder if in these cards we aren't caving in to the message culture and society believe about Advent and Christmas, rather than the one Christians have proclaimed for 2,000 years. If you've turned on the TV once in the last month, you know what I'm talking about. Advertisers tell us several thousand times a day how to achieve happiness and merriment and joy (Have you seen the Best Buy ad where the lady preempts Santa? Ugh.).  According to them, life is supposed to be glamorous and delicious and exciting and beautiful, especially in December.

But on Sunday we'll hear the timeless words of comfort offered by God through prophet Isaiah (40:1-11), and they certainly don't sound like a slick marketing campaign. God wants us to remember that we are all so vulnerable, that this life and this world and all of its trappings are not permanent. God reminds us that putting our hope and security in a flashy public image is a fool's mistake, and instead, admitting that we don't have it all perfectly together--that we are a mess in need of a savior--is the surest way to experience the sentiments we attach to our pictures on Christmas cards.

Today and tomorrow and as often as you can this Advent, I hope you'll allow yourself to put aside the cheery holiday mask for awhile. Resist the urge to always make everything happy and pretty and perfect. Take time every day, and find a place that is devoid of holiday muzak and cash registers, and try to be quiet with God. In that vulnerable quiet, you'll better hear the cries of the baby in the manger, who came to offer you his holy comfort.