Fractured Saints - never beyond mending - a christian blog for the broken ones

Which is more important: Christmas or Easter?

I ask because Easter will be here in a little over a month, and I found myself today comparing the state of things right now with the state of things in any given mid-November. A month before Christmas, there are 17 radio stations doing 24-hour carols (both religious and secular), and a lot of churches have switched to all Christmas music all the time, too. People are acting stressed out, sure, but that peace and goodwill thing is not imaginary; lots of folks start increasing their charitable giving, preparing celebrations with family and friends, trying to be nicer, getting ready to hail the birth of the savior.

And here we are, with Easter coming up on April 4 — crap, Easter is April 4? Well, no biggie. I’ll worry about it the week before. Wal-Mart has some bunnies on aisle 63. The church will probably do the same-old, same-old, until a week or two before Easter, when maybe the pastor will start a special short series on the crucifixion in which I’m sure a montage from The Passion of the Christ will play a part.

Maybe I’m alone in thinking this is a big deal — after all, I go to a Baptist church, and we Baptists don’t celebrate Lent or Ash Wednesday or Palm Sunday, all of which help prepare folks in other denominations for Easter. Do you guys think this is an issue? Am I being unfair to think maybe our priorities are a little skewed? Is the birth of Christ (which plenty of non-Christians believe happened, even if they disagree about the specifics) more important than His death and resurrection (on which rest all our hope)? Does the secularization of Christmas that so many people rail against every single year actually (*gasp*) play a teeny tiny role in the importance we place on that holiday? Is it even appropriate to compare?

Most of the time I feel certain that if it weren’t for other people, all of us would have a much stronger Christian walk. If that guy hadn’t cut me off, I wouldn’t have cursed at him; I’d have no problem forgiving that friend of mine if she hadn’t done such a horrible thing to me; I would easily be able to love and respect people if they didn’t act so stupid. Maybe that sounds obvious or ridiculous, but really, isn’t that how we think?

Two years ago, a speaker at a ladies’ retreat I attended talked about this propensity we have to lay the blame for our own behavior on others. She said that since we can’t control what other people do or say or think, our only concern in all things should be that we do our part. Fundamentally, her lesson was pretty much the same as “turn the other cheek,” but for some reason, the way she put it really resonated with me, and it helped me better apply that principle to the situations in which I often find myself.

For instance, if someone at my job makes a bad decision that ends up costing me a lot of extra time and effort that could have been avoided, that doesn’t make it OK for me to fume over it or to be wrathful toward that person. My job is to do my part, and my part only—which is to do my work “heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.” God won’t hold me accountable for my colleague’s actions, but neither will he weigh those actions heavily when judging the rightness or wrongness of my behavior.

If I hear that someone at church disagrees with my idea of appropriate church dress, that doesn’t make it OK for me to take pains to wear what they don’t like just to make a point. C.S. Lewis would call that uncharitable behavior, and I believe Christ would, too. My job is to do my part, which is to give fair consideration to that person’s objections and then to shut up and love them as God commands, regardless of whether we agree.

Say a prayer for me that in all things I can concentrate on doing my part, and nothing more.

This is my first post on FS, and since I’m the first girl here I thought I would write about submission, or love, or Deborah, or Esther, or the status of women in the Bible in general. You know, either something “feminist” or something “girly.” But I don’t feel like writing any of that now.

My two-year-old daughter is sleeping peacefully upstairs after two days of fever that peaked at 104.4 degrees. My mother-in-law, who is one of the kindest people I know, spent yesterday morning taking care of her for me. My mom and dad, who moved here last year just to be near us, came over this morning to help out. My sister-in-law, another of the kindest people I know, was thoughtful enough to call on her way home from work to check and see how the midget was doing. My husband, who is slugging through one of his busiest work months of the year, made a special trip home yesterday just to have dinner with his little girl.

So I don’t feel like being anything but grateful today. I wish it didn’t take so many little salvations to make me feel that way. In the past few days people I love have saved me from frustration, and worry, and hassle, and I feel abundantly grateful for that. So you’d think that, faced with the one big salvation I’ve been given, I’d wake up every morning ready to tell those rocks not to bother crying out, because I’ve got it covered. Why is it often so much harder to praise the name of the Lord for His sacrifice than to praise our earthly, day-to-day saviors?