Christmas Lips

The Us Postal Service, UPS, Fed-Ex, DHL, are all busy delivering packages. Several of them were dropped off at our doorstep this week. I’ve never worked for any of those outfits but it has to be crazy around Christmas time.Just today the UPS man delivered a new artificial Christmas tree, complete with lights. Our old one was dropping needles like a dried out real Christmas tree, slowly morphing into a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. This of course means it is time to bring up the decorations from under the house and get everything looking like Christmas.In one sense it is good that Christmas only lasts for a short (albeit ever expanding) season, we’d be worn out, even fatter, and broke if it were. But wouldn’t it be great if some of the things of Christmas were to persist all year long, like generosity, the effort to bless people and make others happy, an emphasis of recognizing and worshipping God?Back to the delivery guys this pastor’s note started with. All of us actually do deliver something most every day and throughout the year. Sometimes our deliveries bless, bring joy, help, and encourage. Sometimes our deliveries resemble more a Waste Management truck backing up and dumping its load at the local landfill. I am talking about what our lips deliver on a daily basis. If you have a few minutes get out a Bible and read the Christmas story in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, as you read look for what comes out of the mouths of the people who really get Christmas, look for “Christmas Lips” and ask yourself if you have yours on? Hear the words of praise and worship, of kindness and blessing, of hope and peace, of awe and surrender, of truth and compassion, of wonder and amazement, both spoken and implied, from both the tongues of men and angels. So do you have them on, your “Christmas lips?”Imagine what difference it would make if long after all the Christmas decorations are put back under the house we still had our “Christmas lips” on? What if kind, peaceful, and encouraging words would scent the air throughout the year? What if truth, hope, and mercy would be packages we regularly, continually, and faithfully deliver? What if the fruit of our lips were never foul but sweet, forgiving, and beneficial? What if the words from our mouths were more God-centered, more spiritually aware, more filled with worship and praise? How would it impact our relationships, our homes, our places of work, our public discourse if we decided to not take down and pack up our “Christmas lips?” What would it be like if others anticipated with joy things delivered with our mouths?Let me end with a “Christmas Lips” prayer, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer” Psalm 19:14 (NASB).Merry Christmas. Pastor Hans