This Year, You Must Celebrate Christmas

        There are some very personal, difficult decisions being made about celebrating Christmas this year. Perhaps you are trying to figure out if you should stay home by yourself, or celebrate with your family whom you love. Maybe you want to invite a few friends over, or maybe you've been invited to a small gathering, but are uncomfortable with going. Let us think this through in one way.

        This very moment in Canada, there are bureaucrats pushing legislation through the government that allow anyone who feels depressed to get a lethal injection - to kill themselves. There are the 'essential services' of abortion clinics maintaining a roaring business in murder. And since the general idea of society is that we spawned out of a lifeless pool of chance, we live a therefore meaningless existence, and scamper round gathering as many things as we can, before finally being sealed in box and left to rot in the ground. 

        The shadows of death lurk around every corner - as is usual. It only happens this year that a world which tries to forget death, but at the same time deal it out whenever they see fit, has finally embraced it head on. But not from a position of hope. To anyone with eyes to see, they're doing a tremendously good job of scaring themselves to death with the despair of death.

        So what's preventing the majority of men and women from throwing in the towel right now? Why not jump off that bridge on Christmas Eve? Why not turn out the lights, take a cyanide tablet and vanish into the darkness of oblivion? Isn't that the only way out? No. Because whether you want to acknowledge it or not, deep in your innermost being you know that this life is not all there is.

        There is real, true, hope.

        But that hope can only be known through belief in the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ: that He was, is, and will ever be the only Saviour the world can ever know. The Muhammadans can't give life. Buddhism offers no peace. Hinduism gives no hope. And humanism presents no solution to death. The one true God Almighty, who is holy and just, merciful and kind, has given the only answer for our longing for meaning, our searching for truth, our despairing cry for hope. The answer is a person - the Lord Jesus Christ.

        The Rev. Joe Boot has said that "When we worship at Christmas - with our friends and family, with our Christian brothers and sisters face-to-face - to praise the King of kings and Lord of lords, in spite of a medical technocracy, we are not despising our neighbour: we are walking in obedience to our King who alone is worthy of all praise and glory. This is the Gospel."

        Thus only the Christian has the right reason to truly celebrate Christmas. And as one of my acquaintances so rightly put it, "It is high time to celebrate our Saviour by being Merry Christians this season, in righteous defiance of our tyrannical overlords."

        It will indeed be a very dismal, gloomy, and unsettling Christmas this year - and every year - for those who do not know the Lord Jesus as their King and light of life. But the offer of His hope dazzles through the darkness: will you not only accept it, but live it?

        Go then, join with the fellow soldiers of your King. Celebrate His first coming. Look forward to His return. Fellowship with hearty merriment around a joyous table - where He is with you. Don't live in fear of this world, which is dying. Live bravely in the light of Christ - which is true Life.

'For no gallant son of freedom

To a tyrant's yoke should bend,

And a noble heart must answer

To the sacred call of "Friend."'

~ Keep the Home Fires Burning

Written by W. A. Moore