In the November issue of Christianity Today, Megan Hill asks “If Everything Is Awesome, Where Does That Leave God?” In her first three paragraphs, she writes the following:
I have never eaten an awesome meal. I’ve never driven an awesome car or taken an awesome vacation. I haven’t danced to an awesome song or streamed an awesome video. I do, however, know an awesome God.
My history with the word awesome goes back to my childhood, when my father—an amateur linguist and professional theologian—gently corrected my early attempts to apply that word indiscriminately. In our family, we reserved the adjective for the One whose name is great and awesome (Ps. 99:3).
My dad’s point was not that awesome itself was some sacred incantation only for the divine . He simply wanted me to acknowledge with my words that, in both character and magnitude, God is different from deep-dish pizza.
Hill goes on to describe that “we live in a culture of inflated language,” as illustrated by The Lego Movie in which they sing “Everything is awesome.” Then she says, “But if everything is awesome, then nothing is.”
After reading her column, I began thinking about Christmas, and it occurred to me that we can ready for Christmas — or we can be ready for an awesome Christmas.
So what is the difference. Well, I am glad you asked.
I began getting ready for Christmas early this year because Nancy, Dave, and I are holding a Christmas Open House on Saturday. I knew I would not have time to put the Christmas tree up and do some other decorating after Thanksgiving, so I decorated the tree and did some other Christmas decorating earlier than I ever have — before Thanksgiving. You can’t have a Christmas Open House, after all, without Christmas decorations. Now if I get a few more presents that I still need to buy, I will be ready for Christmas. It will be good to have all of that done for Christmas, but that will not make it an awesome Christmas.
You see, an awesome Christmas requires understanding and celebrating how Christmas began, and worshiping the one Christmas is all about.
So you will have an awesome Christmas when you reflect again on how the God who alone is awesome came into the world by being born of a virgin in the person of Jesus. Everything about the birth had been prophesied for centuries and occurred just as it had been prophesied. Nothing like that had happened before and has not happened since. God became a man. Angels announced the birth to shepherds who went to worship him. The world has not been the same since. Reflect on that and you will have an awesome Christmas
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