Meeting Jesus...

Psychiatric Pez Dispensers. Have we come to depend too much on the world and how it can soothe and comfort us? As we look around right now at all the “holiday sales” and “free gifts with purchase” and crowded restaurants…it seems that the pez dispensers have become critical to getting through the stressed season.

What does your pez dispenser look like?

How is it possible that this is what God actually planned for us? Simply put, it's not what God planned at all.

It's what we did to ourselves.


What does Jesus think about Christmas as He watches us celebrate it?
Does His heart ache with sorrow as He sees us spending money freakishly as we beat down people at the mall for that great last sale, and rushing past the churches…the food banks…the ones who represent Jesus and Who He really is.

He’s the one in the mall, sitting alone, watching us rush by.
She’s the one alone at the bar…drinking the last drink of the night.
He’s the one lying inside the MRI machine at the Children’s Hospital.
She’s the one late at night, wondering how to pay the bills now that she’s left alone to raise her kids.

Each of them need to know Jesus. The real one.

Matthew 26: 39 “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”

Jesus wanted nothing more for us than love. His love. Love that started in a manger and died on a cross before being brought back to life. Jesus gave up all of Himself so He could be Himself for us. He gave us all we needed to be all that He wants.

He wants us to be love. We tend to offer the world our Christianity. We even try to offer them “Christ-like” Christianity. But how often do we really offer them Christ alone?

Giving up something for someone when they don’t deserve it, that’s love.
Doing something for someone else when you don’t expect anything in return, that’s love.

Jesus doesn’t expect anything in return. But He came that cold winter night in the hopes that we would return His love…regardless of what it looks like.

Presents? We’ve been given more than we ever need and much more than we deserve in the grace of Jesus Christ.

And if we don’t offer Christ alone instead of offering ourselves, how will anyone ever meet Jesus?