The True Star: Short and Sweet Christmas Devotionals

[Editor’s Note: This is a Christmas guest post by Maria Drayton. All of our Diva Christmas guest posts this year are “Short and Sweet” this year to make it easier to follow along with the devotionals! If you’d like to catch up, here are links for day 1. day 2. day 3. day 4. day 5. day 6. day 7.]

The True Star

The morning air had already begun to get brisk and now it stayed darker for longer in the morning.  Daylight savings was just around the corner. The leaves displaying their multitude of shades as they drop lightly from the trees, car windows covered in the morning dew, not yet winter but knowing it’s right around the corner.

I had only stopped to get bug spray but as I stood in the checkout line I remembered, “I need to get Christmas lights!”  Feeling proud of myself that I was ahead of the game, I briskly walked toward the decorative light section.

Families get serious around my neighborhood about outdoors Christmas decorations.  It wasn’t something I was used to because I hadn’t grown up with it.  I recall one Christmas my mom couldn’t afford a Christmas tree so we settled for decorating one of her large house plants and placed the gifts around it.  So decorating was always something I dreamed about as a little girl.  I remember my favorite book as a child was an interior decorating and design book.  I would look at those pages and just imagine living in one of those homes, decorating it all myself.

Now that I could use my decorating skills, I ran with it and became obsessed.  The focus of Christmas had shifted and now everything got decorated, even the bathroom.

In my neighborhood, decorations spring up right after Thanksgiving, sometimes even before.  I was beginning to get accustomed to going all out. It had gotten to be so much that my seasonal decorations now needed a bin.  This year I was planning to go back to a favorite of mine, the Star Shower.  But this time I opted for the Star Shower Motion.  None of this seemed to bother me until I was challenged to write on the topic of Christmas.

That’s when I realized what it had become in my home, a time to decorate.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  Not that I didn’t know that I overdid it but that it had become my primary focus during the holidays.

Christmas should be about the true star, Jesus Christ, the Lord himself, who died for us and chose to save us.  As the holidays approach I am humbly reminded;

“For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

With this in mind, I am making some much different plans this year and hope you will too!

Maria DraytonMaria Drayton: originally from Seattle, Washington she is a graduate of Washington State University and has a degree in Communications with an emphasis in Journalism. Maria has traveled all over the United States but currently resides in Deptford, New Jersey with her husband and son. With a passion for the Lord, she has been serving and walking with Him since the early 90’s and desires to bring a young, fresh, new look into intimacy with God.  Since 2001, she attends Bethel Deliverance International Church and desires to begin a women’s ministry for young women to learn to apply God’s word in our daily lives. Follow Maria’s new women’s group S.P.A.R.K.L.E. on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sparklewomen/