The Role of Stuff - Audio
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Our Christmas series this year is called Christmas wisdom, and I've kind of broken down some of the toughest things that happen over the course of the year that really center on Christmas, the things that cause us the most, you know, misery and insanity during the Christmas season, and we're saying, "Hey, let's fix Christmas. No more of this madness. We need to have, like, a plan in place so that Christmas is not ruined by our, you know, stress, and so for the beginning, the very first week we talked about happiness, how to have a happy Christmas, right? And then last week we talked about how to deal with your crazy family, and this week we're talking about the role of stuff. And the great news is that every week I give you a three point, sure fire never fails plan to make your life infinitely better. You're welcome. It's, yeah, and there's no room for ambiguity, it's just this, this, this, and this, and that fixes all the problems in your life. So, I don't know, I guess that's really popular, a lot of churches do that, so we thought we'd jump on board, and here we go. So, let's, so, here's the question then. This week, "Do the Proverbs teach us, or do they help us get a handle on the issue of presence and giving at Christmas?" This is a major issue. I wish, I wish that when we all heard the words "great Christmas," we immediately thought of, like, little baby Jesus, you know, face shining, but that's not what we think of. When we say, "I had a great Christmas," or, "This is a great Christmas," we think of this. Last week we talked about Christmas vacation, National Lampoon, another Christmas classic, as it were, is a Christmas story. You may remember the catchphrase, "You'll shoot your eye out." This picture is iconic for me because it sort of sums up what we think of as great Christmas. Great Christmas is, this is Randy, this is Ralphie's little brother. And what's happened now is Randy has opened so many presents, and you can see a few of the things there. He has a Frankenstein mask near his head, but really he's cradling his favorite present, which is a Zeppelin, and he's hugging it tight to himself. He's surrounded by wrapping paper, which has formed the sort of nest, and he now has passed out because he is so filled with the joy of toys and receiving. And I just, I mean, I don't know, even if you're not like, even if you don't think of yourself as a Christian or a religious person, you have to wonder, "Does that not seem a little like, I mean, is that really what it's all about?" A lot of people have been asking me, "Hey, Tom, what do you want for Christmas?" So I'll tell you, first of all, what I've been saying is I don't want anything, because typically that's the case. But then I started to think about it, "No, no, there is something I want."
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Do the Proverbs teach us how to handle presents and giving at Christmas?