The most popular Christmas movie this year is THE POLAR EXPRESS, produced by Tom Hanks. A boy dreams of contacting Santa Claus. He dreams that a train picks up children who take a night-time ride to the North Pole to see Santa Claus. Some of the children are skeptical about Christmas. Some have been disappointed in the past and are afraid to hope that Santa will come for them on Christmas morning. Some doubt that Santa exists.

After supper was over I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Pa to get down the old Bible. I was still feeling sorry for myself and, to be honest, I wasn't in much of a mood to read Scriptures. But Pa didn't get the Bible; instead he bundled up again and went outside. I couldn't figure it out because we had already done all the chores. I didn't worry about it long though; I was too busy wallowing in self-pity.

At times we are tempted to think of God as unconcerned for us, who is indifferent to our fate, who just doesn’t care. Such a God is irrelevant to our needs. And since he seems irrelevant, we lose interest in him, for it doesn’t seem to make any difference whether we believe in him. Such a view of God is far from the face of God Jesus reveals to us.

The numbers that we have to crunch in dealing with the annual operating budget and capital funds for building purposes, maintenance, staff support, and outreach, can so preoccupy us that the amount of time and space we give to Jesus can be squeezed out. We say that the church is Christ-centered, but so many other activities and interests can displace the presence of the Lord from our center to the periphery.