After Christmas

Thursday, December 26, 2013

The “day after” –  it’s always such an anti-climactic letdown! 

·              You’ve sent a zillion Christmas cards

·              You’ve spent countless hours decorating the house and the tree

·              You’ve spent twice the National debt on toys, sweaters and food

·              You used up four month’s-worth of calorie allotment on fruitcake

….and….worst of all….

·              On Christmas Eve Santa brought forty-two toys for your kids that require 900 screws and other thing-a-ma-jigs each, and you wore out three screwdrivers and used up the entire year’s allotment of cussing!

What is left on Dec 26^th?

That’s also a list….which includes, in part, three refrigerators-full of leftover fruitcake, mounds of wrapping paper and flattened cardboard boxes, piles of screws and thing-a-ma-jigs that didn’t fit in forty-two toys and a gnawing feeling inside your stomach due either to the turkey stuffing you ate at four in the morning, or realizing your credit cards had a meltdown….or, worse, both!

What was I thinking?

For a great many of us, we get involved in more than we can handle because we get swept away in the moment.  Wanting to have “the perfect family holiday” we overspend and over-commit our schedules (and, I’ve heard we over-eat as a means of comforting ourselves that it’ll be alright…pass the punkin’ pie, please).

A little comfort please

While taking away the impressive new number on your credit card balance, or the ache in your tummy from four pieces of apple pie is beyond the scope of this devotion, let me point you to what Peter said about the “precious promises”:  they are made for us to escape our greed which leads to impulse buying, running and eating.

Most of us imagine we cannot do what the Bible requires. That is to withstand our own natural Greed and lust.  But Peter tells us we have the great and precious promises of God that we can do it.  

You can overcome.

You've got a whole year to practice.

Get started!