Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Fear Gear...

Can you feel it in the air? It's as if the Spirit of Christmas is turning into the Memory of Christmas. Without realizing it, it seems like people are more and more succumbing to a quiet fear. As a matter of fact, many people don't even know exactly what it is that seems to be shifting. It's as if Christmas, the way it used to be celebrated, is becoming a thing of the past - replaced with "Happy Holidays". It's not the same.

This country has, in the past, embraced the celebration of Christmas as it symbolized the birth of Christ. We had nativity scenes in the park. People would wish everyone a "Merry Christmas" with joy. The spirit in the air was due to... the Spirit. Why? Because we were celebrating the birth of Jesus. God had to have been pleased. So many people throughout the world and through the ages have hated God. But here, in America, even our coins expressed our love of God. "In God We Trust".

As a country we have been blessed in many ways, but some of us have confused Gods spiritual blessings with prosperity in the material realm, as if that were the only way God could bless us. It actually fits quite well with the American Dream idea...and then we did two things.
1) We relegated God to "Religion" and compartmentalized our relationship with Him, focusing on church attendance.
2) We stopped talking about Him.

Now, our big "evangelical tool" is to say "Merry Christmas". It seems, for a variety of reasons, some of us are allowing fear to dictate our actions or non-actions. But not everyone. Many citizens refuse to let fear rule them. It makes me happy to know that a significant amount of people throughout our land refuse to be shifted into...

The Fear Gear,

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