Giving God Complete Control

December 25, 2009

Is 52:7-10
Heb 1:1-6
Jn 1:1-18

A story is told  about a four year old boy  who was  helping his father  set up the Christmas decorations. In the midst of their preparation, the young boy suddenly asked his father, ‘Daddy, what does ignore mean?’ The father explained,’ Ignore means not to pay attention to people when they call you.’ Immediately, the little boy looked at his father and said, ‘I don’t think we should ignore Jesus.’ Puzzled, the father knelt closer to his animated son and replied, ‘I don’t think we should ignore Jesus either, son. I think we should give him our full attention. Why do you say that we ignore him?’ ‘But, Daddy, that’s what the Christmas carol says, ‘Oh come let us ignore him.’ (Sowers Seeds Aplenty, Brian Cavanaugh)

Kids sometimes say the darndest things yet when we re-examine what they are saying we will find out that it is sometimes true. This is the time of the year when everybody is busy preparing for the coming of Jesus. There are times in our lives that we get caught up with the preparation for Christmas like shopping, going to parties, putting decorations that we forget to prepare our HEART.
 
As we celebrate Christmas today, God wants us to prepare our hearts for the coming of His Son. There are three ways by which we can prepare our hearts:
 
1. The cleaning of our heart
  When some visitors come to our house we usually prepare for them by doing some general cleaning. The same is true with our hearts. We know that Jesus is coming so we need to do some general cleaning. We can do this by going to confession or by reconciling with those who have hurt us or those whom we have hurt.

2.  The re-arranging of priorities
     An important part of Christmas is re-arranging things. Just as we re-arrange our schedules and our homes during Christmas, God also wants us to re-arrange our lives especially our heart. In re-aaranging our lives, God wants us to make room for His Son.  We make room for His Son by making Him the center of our lives.

3. The decorating of our heart
    God decorates our heart by removing the old and creating something new. In order for God to decorate our heart, we must give him complete control over our whole life. Most of the time, we only give God partial control of our life and allow Him only to make the changes that we approve. God’s desire for us is to make our life more beautiful.

God wants only the very best for our life. However, he waits for us to give Him permission to begin the work. God desires to decorate our life with His blessing and give us something that is completely new.

As we celebrate Christmas today, let our hearts  be part of the preparation for the coming of Jesus. Let us clean our hearts, let us re-arrange our priorities, and allow God to completely decorate our hearts. Let me end this sharing with this quotation, “Until one feels the spirit of Christmas, there is no Christmas. All else is outward display - so much tinsel and decorations. For it isn’t the holly, it isn’t the snow. It isn’t the tree not the firelight’s glow. It’s the warmth that comes to the hearts of men and women when the Christmas spirit returns again.” (Anonymous)

A blessed coming of Jesus to all!

Fr. Edsel Demillo, SVD
Dagupan City