We have officially entered the Christmas season.

And today I actually want to talk about how can we not just celebrate Christmas, but embody it in our lives.

How can we be Christlike as we go through our busy days of the holidays and when we prepare and anticipate the birth of Jesus?

So I want to talk about that today and I also want to talk about how many of us start to feel overwhelmed at this time of year.

We get caught up in the busyness of the season when we get caught up in trying to make Christmas perfect.

But my question to myself and to each of us is what is it that we're chasing and are we actually taking our focus off of a Christ centered season?

And so that's what I want to dig into today.

Okay, let's start with are we striving to create what we consider perfect during the Christmas season?

I am guessing many of you are, much like I felt in the past, which is you wanted everything to be decorated to look lovely, twinkling lights and greenery.

You wanted to smell good, you wanted it tidy so that you could enjoy Christmas.

You have a spot for gifts.

You have your wrapping paper and your bows and your scissors and your tape.

And that's all good and well until we start obsessing over, we want it just so instead of remembering that we live in these places and that chaos will come to our door because people live in our homes.

And so I think it's first important to get real with ourselves and ask ourselves, are we striving for perfect?

Whether it's that we're striving to find the perfect gift or we're striving to have the perfect meal, right?

Maybe a holiday meal or a perfect holiday party.

Maybe we're striving to make our house look a certain exact way, but in all of it, we continue to not feel like it's enough.

I have absolutely been here.

Or maybe we're striving or moving towards perfect.

And in our minds, perfect means saying yes to every party and being dressed in the perfect holiday outfit.

And look, I love getting together with friends and family.

I love celebrations.

I love the twinkling lights and the smell of greenery.

I love all those things.

And those are all beautiful things.

But we just have to make sure we aren't trying to meet a standard that's never going to happen.

And so the first thing today is just asking ourselves, are we chasing this ideal of Christmas by its visuals, by the way that we in our head envision something to be.

In other words, we are connecting a Christmas experience with this desire to make Christmas memories, a desire to make Christmas perfect for our kids or for our family.

But really what we're doing, what that really is, is we're trying to hold on too tight.

We are trying to control an outcome by designing our house or the party and the details of it and all these things.

And like I said, there's nothing wrong with trying to make beautiful Christmas memories.

There's nothing wrong with trying to invite people in.

Actually, I would encourage you to invite people in to your home to the during this Christmas season.

But we need to make sure we're doing it for the right reasons.

We need to make sure that we are going to then not be the busy one in the kitchen who doesn't even make the time to connect with our family and our friends because we're trying to make things so perfect.

All right, so one of the scriptures I first want to share with you is the idea in Romans 12:13, which basically says, see, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

But basically it's saying we should be helping other needy fellow Christians, right?

And opening our home to strangers.

And by strangers, we mean other people, right?

Not our closest friends.

Maybe.

Maybe we're going to host the neighborhood or we're going to participate in a community event or there's people traveling that we have connected through our church or something else.

But that's one of my favorite scriptures because it reminds us to practice hospitality.

But remember, hospitality is different than entertaining.

Hospitality is the opposite of perfect.

Hospitality is saying, regardless of what, what I have to offer food, or how humble my home or my table might be, or how grand it might be, that we are going to open up our homes and our hearts and let people in.

In other words, we're going to do life with other people and we are going to share what we have with others.

And part of what I'm going to talk about later is exactly that.

How can we embody Christmas in our communities?

And how can we embody it to the people around us, both that we know well and those that we may not?

I also want to share with you 1 Thessalonians 4:7.

This versions from the message.

It says, God hasn't invited us into a disorderly, unkept life, but into something holy and beautiful, as beautiful on the inside as the outside.

And this is, this is much what I'm kind of referencing, right, is we don't want to chase perfect.

We don't want to chase how something looks.

We want to feel the spirit of Christmas, right?

The anticipation of Christ coming in our hearts.

We want to be able to share that with other people.

And so instead of trying to make things perfect, we want to focus on simplifying.

We want to focus on how can we make things easier or simpler so that we can actually be present.

We can be present and have more time to be in the Word.

We can have more time to, you know, just be with God.

We can have more time with the people we care about, and we can have more space to show up and embody Christmas in the world.

And so what I want to share with you next is this.

How are we taking our focus off of Christ or a Christ centered season?

And one good indicator of this is are we finding small ways to do things that keep pointing people back to Christ?

Are we embodying and showing people hope in this season?

Are we showing up in love?

We're showing up in kindness or acts of kindness?

Are we finding peace in our lives?

Are we helping other people have more peace in their lives by what we're doing?

And are we feeling joyful in this season?

Because if we're too busy and we're doing too many things and our expectation is so many gifts and that they need to be perfect, it's really hard to have a, you know, fruit of the spirit of joy and peace in our lives.

Instead, we'll feel anxious and busy and constantly seeking or looking for the perfect meal we should be serving or the perfect gift.

And we just can't seem to find it for somebody.

I don't know about you, but some time ago I gave up on that.

I gave up on finding perfect gifts because it took so much mental energy.

I love buying gifts, but it's become so hard because most of us have so many things.

We don't really need more things.

What we need is more presence.

We need more experiences and we need more connection.

And so I'm trying my best to focus on that instead of just buying more, more, more.

Especially because with my young adult children, I buy them things and often they just sit in their rooms with a tag still on and I'm done with that.

I, I don't want to buy things because I feel like I have to buy more presents to go under the tree.

I want to have more presence.

Okay, so that's, that's that.

And then how do we.

Right, so first of all, I think we just need to focus on how are we spending our time this season and what things are causing us to feel more anxious or frenzied and can we turn the dial down on those things?

Turn the dial up on being present.

So sometimes that means having quiet time, having time for devotions.

It might be having a cup of coffee or hot cocoa or a glass of wine right in the evening with a close friend or your spouse.

But we need to start taking inventory of, of, you know, between Thanksgiving and Christmas and in the new year, how are we spending our time?

Are we literally just busy every minute or are we finding time to rest?

Are we finding time to notice the sacred moments in our life and in this season right of Christmas?

Because it is a special time and I actually want to share with you something that Shauna Nyquist says in her book Bittersweet about this time of year.

She's talking about thin places.

And basically she explains a thin place, according to Celtic mystics, is a place where the boundary between the natural world and the supernatural is one.

One is more permeable, thinner if you will.

And she says thin places.

Places where the boundary between the divine world and the human world becomes almost non existent.

And the two divine and human can for a moment dance together uninterrupted.

Some are physical places and some aren't places at all, but states of being or circumstances or seasons.

Christmas is a thin place.

A season during which even the hardest hearted people think about what matters.

When even the most locked up individuals loosen their grasps for just a moment in the face of the deep beauty and hope of Christmas.

The shimmer of God's presence, not always plainly visible in our world, is more visible at Christmas.

When we find a thin place anytime, anywhere, we should live differently in the face of it.

Because if we don't, we miss some of the best moments that life with God has to offer us.

These thin places are gifts, treasures.

They're worth changing our lives for.

Reach through from human to sacred.

Every time the goodness of this season moves you, a thin place is an opportunity to be more aware of the divine fingerprints all over this world.

And Christmas is one invitation after another to do that.

And she says this.

When you hear music that pierces your spirit, thank God for the gift of music.

When you witness generosity that reminds you of the deep goodness of humanity, thank God for the way he created us.

When you feel a profound sense of beauty, thank God for it.

When the traditions and smells and sounds of Christmas that you love and wait for all year long overwhelm you and you think, I love this world we live in, thank God for those things.

When the faces of your children or your parents shock you with the love you feel for them.

Thank God.

And then I actually want to share this too, she says.

There's another kind of thin place and we find ourselves in these places when our lives and our hearts are broken open.

Brokenness has a way of allowing supernatural into our lives in the same way that deep joy and great beauty do.

And maybe I'm finding even more.

I have some great older episodes that I'm going to put into the show.

Notes below that might really be a great encouragement for you this time of year.

One is about the soup in the Sabbath.

So that's a wonderful episode.

Just about you know how soup can be such a wonderful meal and easy to plan for a busy day or busy night or for the Sabbath.

And then I have other episodes just about how can we really enjoy this Christmas season?

How can we step into honoring and going through Advent?

So I have all these other episodes I'm going to share with you in the show notes and go ahead and check those out.

And if you haven't already joined my community, go over to KristinFitch.com and sign up for my email newsletter.

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Just do the most beautiful life you can, the way God designed us to be living.

And then also I have a joyful devotional 15 day devotional that you can go go to my website and download under my workbooks completely free if you haven't gotten it yet.

And I have some other great workbooks that next year may not be free much longer.

So go and grab those.

And I would love to just encourage you.

Not just here but in my inbox.

And as always, if you have a suggestion for me for the show, I would love to hear it.

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You can contact me through my website KristinFitch.com There's a contact form and a podcast guest submission form as well.

I hope that this season you will just find those thin places that you will make the time to be that embodiment of Christ in the world and and that you will slow down and take the time to experience true rest, peace, joy and that you will feel the hope and love of the coming of Christ.

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