Our Christmas To-Do List
This Friday our team is going on a two week extended break. No email or meetings. No social media. Goodbye Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams! No conversations about how we can help move this mission forward. We are going to lay down the efforts of this year, rest in God’s goodness, and allow him to fill our souls. You might be asking, how are we going to do that? Great question!
✔️Slow Down
Most of us experience a little bit of the “Christmas Crazy” rather than the hopeful waiting of Advent. Sometimes it’s a sign we are simply moving too fast. Our team is going to do our best to fight against a crazy holiday season by intentionally slowing down for the last two weeks of December. Rather than making all the extra commitments we are taking a step back to ask ourselves “what matters most”. We are creating extra margin for our souls and hearts to be renewed.
✔️Spend Quality Time with Family
As we slow down, we are going to lay aside anything that overwhelms us for the little things that delight our hearts. With some extra margin, we are going to spend more time with our families and be intentional about embracing the anticipation our kids have in this Christmas season. We’ll take long drives to look at Christmas lights, spend time in our jammies watching our favorite Christmas movies and drink lots of hot chocolate with marshmallows. Our goal is to fight for joy with those closest to us and show our families how much we love them.
✔️Look Back in Gratitude
We are going to take a few intentional moments to look back and recognize all of the times God spoke and worked in our lives this year. What better way to end this year than in a posture of gratitude!. We often say - Gratitude is the gateway to JOY! - and our team is going to practice it. We will mark the moments in our journals and thank God for all that He has done.
✔️Invite Jesus In
It sounds a bit cliché, but there’s a reason that the lyric “let every heart prepare Him room” exists. We’re really good at filling our minds and hearts with everything but Jesus. As we end a year that could be characterized by a lot of adjectives (insert yours here); one thing that’s evident is that, at the first signs of “normal”, a lot of us were quick to fill our lives back up with “all of the things” and then some. There is no better time than now to actively invite Jesus into all areas of our life! Our team is going to invite Jesus into our thoughts and hearts so that he can shape us and lead us in the coming year ahead.
✔️Embrace Hope
If you look around the world right now then you know we are desperate for Hope. The division, loss, and tragedies of the world are almost too much to bear. We would be missing the point of what this season means to each of us if we only focused on the good; without acknowledging that this can be a hard season for many.
Yet, as we sit and read through the story of the first Christmas, deep inside, a twinge of hope wells up. God sent his Son to us so we wouldn’t have to navigate this life alone. He could have sent Jesus to earth and kept Him locked up in some palace or kept him hidden away with the priests in some temple. Yet he came, humbly, available to all of us. He sent hope to be born into the world. Our hope is not in anything that this season can offer. Our hope is in the gift God gave us; His son, Immanuel, God with us. We are going to do our best to fully embrace the hope of the world, Jesus.
Friends, we all have two choices we can make this Holiday season. We can buy into the cultural madness that comes this time of year; or we can take the opportunity to fill our souls with more of God and His love and move at his pace. Our team is taking the second option and shutting it down for two weeks to rest in the goodness of God. Would you join us?
Slow down with us and seek Jesus this Christmas.
The Seek Well Team
