I am watching Charlie Brown Christmas Show on TV and for the first time this month, I feel the holiday spirit come to me. "Do you know what Christmas is all about?," Charlie asks. He then quotes Luke 2 from the Bible, then picks up his straggly pine and runs off with tree in hand - down a winding path. His pals make fun of his folly, his truth, his child-like trust. He enters his limp tree in a contest. It's pitiful, silly, yet . . when surrounded by the Christmas carols sung by his pals, even the limbs of Charlie Brown's tree lifted high upwards - the bare limbs seemed to magically respond to the praises of the children. The Truth of Christmas came alive in that straggly tree in the midst of their simple adoration.
A few days later I slipped into my favorite pew at church for the Christmas Day Sunday Service. I asked myself, "what do I adore this Christmas?" The previous weeks presented me with multiple life challenges and I was. . . well . . . tired, limp with disappointments, gripping heartaches. I laid my purse and coat next to me (along with my heartaches) and joined the choir in the singing of Joy To The World, the Lord is Come . . . reminding me that just because I felt like Charlie Brown's straggly tree, I must remember that our God is - here, today and always. I knew that Charlie's Brown's attitude and Spirit were the same
Spirit I knew and relied on.
If God can encourage me, like Charlie Brown's puny tree, and inspire me and lift high my sagging spirits like the limp limbs of Charlie's simple Christmas tree, perhaps He can lift anyone's sagging spirits. I stood and gathered my purse and wrap and walked from that moment - a moment of Truth, knowing full well what Christmas is all about: Birth of the New, Death of the Limp.
Oh . . . I dropped off my disappointments and worry-sins at the alter.
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