One Christmas, when I was a boy, my twin brother and I got a hot wheels play set. IT WAS AMAZING! This thing looped, it curved, and it even went backwards. As a child I couldn’t think of anything better to get. It was THE thing I wanted, which solidified that I believed Santa was real. It also confirmed that I must have been a good boy that year to receive such an amazing gift for him.
Later in the afternoon, as my brother and I were playing in the basement, we came across a very large box in the storage closet. Strangely, it was the box to our hot wheels track. “Why would Santa leave the box here?”, we wondered. As we tried to understand Old St. Nick’s odd decision, it dawned on my brother first: “Aeric”, he said, ”I think mom and Dad bought this for us.” I was stunned for a second. How could this be? There were no presents under the tree Christmas Eve, and then the presents appeared! When would my parents have had the time to not only wrap up all of our presents, but stuff the stockings AND put together a race car track? There must be a logical explanation.
We ran upstairs to confront our parents about the mystery of the hot wheels box. I think it’s safe to say that we all know what happened next. That day, we had the fateful Santa talk. Now, from what I remember, we took the truth pretty well. Heck, we still had the race cars! But despite my happiness with the presents, I think this experience created a slight shift for me as a kid. That day, an idea began to form: you have to see something to believe in it.
Ironically, in the middle of the word “believe” is the word “lie.” Many of us approach the idea of belief with this kind of a mentality. We have this suspicion that a lie may be the center of the things we can’t see, instead of centering our belief in truth which is sometimes unseen. To complicate things further, we are bombarded with lies like, “God doesn’t love you”, “God doesn’t have a purpose for you”, “you are alone”, when the truth is that God loves you unconditionally. God in fact made you for a very special purpose. This season I choose to remember that God believes in me so much, that he gave THE ultimate gift.
Aeric Wallace
Production Director – The Market Church
Join us December 22nd, 2013 for Christmas at The Market Church: “Believe”.
More information at www.TheMarketChurch.com
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