12/9/2013 8:00:00 AM — As I would imagine most churches have done, World Harvest Church has decorated for Christmas. It’s been quite an operation, with volunteers working to set up trees and other seasonal displays over the course of the week to add to what’s already in our foyers, in our tabernacle and other public areas of the church. It was impressive!

Probably many of you have done the same thing on a smaller scale in your homes. Then, sometime after Christmas, the artificial trees, lights, and other supplies will get put away and stored until next year. I don’t mind this at all – in fact, Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. But I’ve been thinking lately about how adding new items to already crowded places might be an apt metaphor for our lives this time of year.

At the local big-box store down the road from our church, for example, the normally wide aisles now have merchandise in the middle of them, creating two smaller aisles (most of that merchandise seems to feature products associated with the television show “Duck Dynasty.” Happy, happy, happy, I guess). So there’s less room to maneuver people and shopping carts. To add to the situation, the Christmas shopping rush brings people into the store that normally wouldn’t be there, and other customers exploring parts of the store they wouldn’t be in the rest of the year. It’s cluttered!

I understand the store’s need to make a return on the products it offers, but that doesn’t change the experience for someone like myself, who is in that store because he has to be rather than because he wants to be.

The stores we frequent aren’t the only things that are cluttered this time of year. My to-do list is longer than it is, say, in August. I’m normally very busy, but December brings holiday messages to write, special services to prepare, friends from other places who are in town only at Christmas to spend time with, and so on. My calendar overfloweth, as well, with social engagements that don’t occur around Independence Day or any other holiday but Christmas.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this. But management consultants will tell you that the good is the enemy of the best. A 24-hour day is a closed system. Two hours spent going to a party in your neighborhood is two hours you can’t spend in the word of God. An afternoon decorating your home for the holidays is an afternoon you can’t prepare a meal for the less fortunate in your community, and so on.

I have found myself wondering – where Christmas is concerned, have we allowed the clutter of the season to obscure the reason for the season?

I’ve had the crazy idea lately that maybe we should take a different approach. What would happen if we brought out all the trees & lights, sang all the carols, and baked all the cookies we wanted in the early stages of the Christmas season – and then, instead of adding things to our environment as December progressed, instead took things away? What if we, piece by piece, obligation by obligation, appointment by appointment, cleared the clutter in our lives to bring the focus of the holiday back to God’s incredible gift of His Son – and the sacrifice Jesus made for us at Calvary? By Christmas Eve, the only thing left would be the only thing that mattered: the cross.

I don’t mean to throw cold water on the traditions of the Christmas season – only to point out that we need to remember why we’re doing all this. Regardless of what the culture tells you, Christmas is a celebration of the ultimate gift of love – God’s gift of His Son.

Gifts to each other at Christmas are appropriate – and biblical: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, ESV). My experience, and I hope yours as well, is that those gifts become even more meaningful when chosen and given in gratitude for what He has already given us in the cross.