If You Love Your Children, Don’t Make Their Christmas Dreams Come True

According to all the commercials and the holiday specials, Christmas is about making dreams come true.

Funny, no one told Jesus.

But then, He didn’t come to work for Walt Disney.

Ask Mary. It probably 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 came as a poor child so we knew He understood the pain of going without. He endured rejection, suffering, and trials so we knew He had walked in our shoes.

He was misunderstood, betrayed, arrested, beaten, mocked, and humiliated. He was abandoned by those He loved. He was convicted unjustly 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.

And 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 for lesser dreams.

That is why we spend the holidays at Target and not caring for those in need.

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.

If they find Him, they won’t realize their dreams – they’ll find their hearts!

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” I Peter 1:3-9