The danger of Christmas busyness

Everyone I speak to at the moment tells me that they are busy. And it’s true; for many of us, December is a crazily busy time of year. There are work deadlines to meet. If you have children at school, you will have concerts to go to, graduation ceremonies, and end of year excursions. There may well be family obligations. Your church might have extra events to celebrate Christmas. It can be exhausting just thinking about all of this, let alone getting through it well.

By the time we hit Christmas itself, so many are totally exhausted. There are big meals to cook or attend, church services to get to, and family to meet up with. Do we feel the joy of Jesus in the middle of all of these traditions? Or does church and worship and thanks just feel like they are extra things to add to the to-do list?

We need to slow down.

Remember the message of the gospel: Jesus came to earth to do what we could not do. The emphasis is on God and his work, not our work. The angels in Luke 2 praise God for what He has done for us (Luke 2:14). The shepherds glorified and praised God for all they had heard and seen (Luke 2:20). Our faith is based on what God has done for us. We must not make our reality the busyness of life and all that we need to be doing.

Perhaps we need to plan to do less this time of year. Sure, we cannot always avoid school events. But the Christmas meal doesn’t need to be something that dominates our thinking for a week. We must not make our lives such a series of tasks that we have no time to reflect and thank God for his goodness to us. If we don’t take time to rest, we can find ourselves measuring things only by how we are going in achieving our goals.

Carve out time to rest, pray, reflect and worship this Christmas. It is all about Jesus, not about what we do.