When did you get your first glimpse of Christmas this year? I got mine at Macy’s. I think it was September when the quartet of miniature singing, swaying Santa Clauses showed up by the men’s department. By Halloween, many other stores had followed suit, with decorations, music, the works. Then we started getting catalogues. And last weekend, throughout the community there was an explosion of light as one home after another took on the bright colors of the season. These are outward signs that we have begun to be drawn into the season. This time of year does have a very strong emotional pull, doesn’t it? It’s a magical, wonderful time. A time of warmth and love. A time to be with family, and friends. A time to celebrate. A time to enter into the joy of giving.

Still, it can be tough to really get into the spirit of things. This year, as I have been talking to people about the season, I have been hearing more than ever before, a sense of restlessness. It seems that a lot of people can’t quite get into the spirit this year. There’s a sense that the season just isn’t what it used to be, or what it ought to be. Many people feel loss, or loneliness instead of peace and joy. Others have struggles that leave them exhausted. Others are dealing with decisions or medical concerns that seem overwhelming. The rest are just plain busy. Little room seems to be left for celebrating.

Along with all this comes the uneasy feeling that the season won’t deliver the goods that it promises. We have been here before, to the season called Christmas. We have felt that powerful pull on our hearts and our wallets. Like the waters of a flood, it has snatched us up and swept us along, leaving the landscape in its wake littered with unpaid bills, antacid wrappers, empty cans and bottles, and some scattered tinsel. And when all was said and done, there was a feeling of emptiness, betrayal even. Is that all there is?

If there’s something missing in your Christmas, I want to invite you to come back and listen again to the message of Christmas, and see if you’ve missed something. When our minds are on something else, it’s easy to hear just part of the story.

For instance, someone from the north was visiting a small southern town and was surprised to see the Three Wise Men in the community nativity scene, wearing firemen’s helmets. So, she stopped at the local Quick Stop on the edge of town and asked the clerk about the helmets. The clerk almost exploded with rage, "You stinkin’ Yankees never do read the Bible!" The northern visitor assured that clerk that she did indeed read the Bible, but didn’t recall anything about firemen. The clerk jerked her Bible from behind the counter and ruffled through some pages, and finally jabbed her finger at a passage. Sticking it in the visitor’s face, she said, "See, it says right here, ‘The three wise men came from afar.’" (Story File, 15.2.2)

It’s easy to just hear part of the message, isn’t it? Or to misunderstand what someone is trying to communicate. Could it be that we’ve done that with Christmas? Christmas represents the greatest message the world has received from God, and by the looks of things, a whole lot of people have just heard part of the message.

If you want to get the whole story, you would do well to listen to the message of John the Baptist. You won’t find a John the Baptist figurine in any of the nativity scenes. But it’s his message that prepares the way for the Christ to come into the rocky wilderness of our hearts. He prepares the way, not with bright lights and mulled cider, but with strong words—words of challenge and words of promise.

Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, John says.

In ancient times, when a very important person like a king would come to visit his subjects, the subjects would prepare for his coming by repairing and rebuilding the roads, so that his journey would be unhindered. When John challenges us to "make his paths straight," he is talking about the road to our heart—which is the control center of our life. God is coming. God is coming with power to heal, power to forgive, power to live. We need to get ready by straightening out the road to our heart. Remove the obstacles, smooth the way.

Does the road to your heart need some repair? Are there attitudes, relationships, feelings, habits, that get in the way of wholeness and peace? Things you cling to so hard that they dominate the landscape of your life? If you want Jesus to come, fix the road to your heart. Remove the obstacles so the way is clear.

John’s message is about repentance. To repent is not merely to feel sorry or guilty for what you’ve done. To repent literally means to turn around. It means to take action. If there is something in the way, get rid of it. If you are walking in the wrong direction, turn around and come back! Take the action that you know you need to take.

It’s not that we need to "fix" ourselves or become perfect before Jesus will accept us. That is far from true. The turning doesn’t change God’s mind. What happens when we turn, is that we change--we open ourselves to what Jesus wants to do in us.

John challenges us with a baptism of repentance; and when we turn, that opens us to the working of God in our life. And John promises that the one to come will do far more for us than we could ever imagine. I have baptized you with water," he said. "But he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

The repentance, the turning, is just the beginning. What we are in for is a whole new way of life.

The message of Christmas is that God is at work in the world. God has an agenda, and that agenda is our salvation, and the salvation of the world. In Jesus Christ, God is announcing that a new day has come. From now on, everything is predicated on the fact that he has come into the world. And when he was born, the world stopped the clock, and started it over on zero again, because this was the beginning of a new age. We wouldn’t be coming up on the year 2000 if it were not for the importance of this event. But the point is that it’s not just history. God has acted in the past, and God will act again to bring about miracles in our own time as well.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that God is at work in our world? Today? Do you believe that God is at work in your life? Today?

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice says to the White Queen, "It’s just no use. One can’t believe impossible things." To this the Queen replies, "I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age I used to practice a half an hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

The trouble with Christmas is that we expect more from the season that it was ever meant to deliver. And we expect too little from God. The Christmas season is about warm family fuzzy feelings, and the soft glow of the candlelight on Christmas Eve, the desire to share and give. But the power to make significant changes in our lives, our families and our world is something that only God can do. And it’s also something God intends to do.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, John says.

When Ed and I baptize someone, they tend to get pretty wet. And we use as much water as we can get away with, because we want to make a point. God is not stingy with grace, nor is God interested in giving us just a little bit of salvation. God wants us to have the whole treatment. When John baptized someone, they didn’t just get water dumped on their head. They waded into the river and got dunked. That represents washing away the old life, and emerging into a new life.

That’s powerful imagery. And it symbolizes what Jesus does. When Jesus comes to us, he dunks us in the Holy Spirit. So often when we talk about the Holy Spirit, we speak of the Spirit coming and dwelling in us. Which is accurate, but if this is the only way we talk about it, this limits our understanding to just a personal, private experience. It’s not just that the Spirit is in us. We are in the Spirit. When Jesus baptizes us with the Holy Spirit, we are immersed in the life of God. We are taken out of our old life, and dunked in the river of God. We become a part of a movement—a part of what God is doing in the world.

But we need to be open to God’s work. My observation is that many people are will to settle for far less than what God wants to do. They would be happy to just get through the season with a minimum of debt and conflict. With a few happy memories and limited stress. But God wants to bring peace to our souls and to the world. God wants to change us in the very essence of our being. My challenge to you this Christmas season is DON’T SETTLE. Don’t settle for less when you can have more. Don’t settle for the artificial when you can have the real thing.

Madeleine L’Engle tells this story about her 98-year-old friend Marie who was an environmentalist & gardener. They were enjoying the flower gardens at Marie’s home and watching hummingbirds. "At first what we were viewing appeared to be the beginnings of hummingbird wars. One hummer in particular was spending so much time and energy keeping other hummers away from the feeder Marie had set up, he had little time to feed himself. I was appalled! But Marie made me look closer. The hummers that were being driven away were much smaller and wobblier than the one I thought was "protecting" his territory; in fact, they were babies in the midst of a very important lesson. In front of that window was not a hummingbird version of ‘king-of-the-hill,’ but a parent who was buzzing its newborns away from the plastic feeder and toward real flowers. Here was a father who did not want any of his children to become dependent on any artificial feeder, no matter how pretty." (parables, etc. 19.10.8)

Don’t be surprised when the Christmas season leaves you wanting. It was never meant to satisfy your deepest needs. Only the Spirit of God can do that. So, this year, get into the Spirit. Don’t settle for warm fuzzies and artificial sweeteners. Go for the real thing.