“Christmas Is Costly”

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

            I have heard many people say how costly and expensive Christmas is.  Many people get themselves in such a financial condition, buying gifts, hosting parties, and such that they will be paying on their credit cards bills for the next five months.  So I guess Christmas is costly.  

But in our rush to buy presents and spend money, think about how costly it was for Jesus to come to this earth:

• It cost Joseph the embarrassment and rumors that his soon-to-be wife was pregnant with a child that was not his.
• It cost Mary her comfort to have her Son born in a stable and to lay him in a manger.
• It cost Mary and Joseph the benefits of home during a long period of exile in Egypt to protect the babe Jesus.
• It cost mothers in and around Bethlehem the massacre of their babies by the cruel order of Herod.
• It cost the shepherds the complacency of their shepherds' life, with the call to go to the manger and to tell the good news.
• It cost the wise men a long journey and expensive gifts and changed lives.
• It cost the early apostles and the early church persecution and sometimes death.
• It cost Paul, John, and Peter as well as other missionaries of Christ untold suffering and hardship to spread the good news.
• It cost Stephen and James and other Christian martyrs of all ages their lives for Christ's sake.
• More than all this, it cost God the Father His own Son-He sent Him to the earth to save men.
• It cost Jesus a life of sacrifice and service, a death cruel and unmatched in history. (Author Unknown)

            So before we complain about how much Christmas cost us or any other thing cost us for that matter; think about how much it cost Christ Jesus to come to this world to die for our sins and redeem all people.

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.   And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…”

(Philippians 2:5-9)

By Mark T. Tonkery

Share