DON’T Make Your Children’s Dreams Come True for Christmas

If you believe all the commercials and holiday specials, Christmas is about making dreams come true. Funny, no one told Jesus. He didn’t come to work for Walt Disney; He came to fulfill His Father’s will. God doesn’t offer us a Jiminy Cricket faith. It isn’t dreamy to know Him, it’s transformative.

Ask Mary. It wasn’t her dream to start her married life under a cloud of suspicion. Ask Joseph. It wasn’t his dream to have his friends wonder if he was a fornicator or a chump. It wasn’t this young couple’s dream to spend years running and hiding from a powerful and angry king. Nor was it the dream of families in Judea to watch Herod’s soldiers kill their infant sons.

Jesus didn’t come to make dreams come true. He came to teach us to dream better dreams.

He arrived a poor child so we knew He understood the pain of going without. He endured rejection, suffering, and trials so we knew He understood our distress, too.

He was misunderstood, betrayed, arrested, beaten, mocked, and humiliated. Those He loved, abandoned Him. He faced an unjust conviction and died at the hands of arrogant and manipulative blind guides – while His mother watched. Christmas isn’t about dreams – not the dreams we normally dream.

It’s a celebration of God’s love for us made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. God came and lived with us. That wasn’t a dream; it was real. It wasn’t about making our dreams come true. It was about delivering us from the lesser dreams of this world so we are free to dream eternal dreams.

He is the originator of dreams, the great Dream Weaver, but we have come under the curse of one who convinced us to trade our glory, our eternal reality, for lesser dreams. That is why we spend the holidays at Stuff-Mart instead of caring for those in need, instead of seeking Christ.

If you love your children this Christmas, don’t work to make their dreams come true. Instead, teach them to dream the best dream – that of a life with Jesus Christ – one that never ends.

Many readers know we celebrated my daughter’s marriage to her long-time friend and the love of her life, Andrew, this past weekend. Here’s a glimpse of the joyous, blessed occasion. Mercy and grace, Lori