Playacting

Our Christmas play will be here on Sunday, and even though I don't know what it's about this year, I'm excited! Everything always comes together to have a great play every year, and I know everyone's been hard at work to make it a great service one more time. We're not alone, of course; churches the world over will be putting on pageants, plays, musicals, dramas, whatever you want to call them. Christmas seems to bring out the actor in all of us (or maybe it's just the directors who do that).

It's fitting we celebrate the Incarnation -- God becoming man -- by becoming other people on stage. The Nativity play is the most appropriate, of course, but there's nothing wrong with any play that brings across the Christmas story and the hope of the gospel. That's what the plays are all about, Charlie Brown: showing the audience the gospel of Jesus Christ, from birth to resurrection. That's something you'll only find in a church Christmas play (or at least I've not seen it as one of the three Hallmark movie plots), and so we need to make sure that's our focus each and every time we do a play.

With that said, let's keep the acting on stage. We need to be authentic, to be ourselves, at all other times. For Christmas, that means being a Christian and being willing to share the Christmas story even when we're not in a play. Don't give a black eye to the guy who reached for the same toy at the same time you did. Show love, sow peace, give joy, and offer hope. Do this every day of the year; don't just act like a Christian at Christmas. Commit yourself to living for Christ always -- and then go see a Christmas play or two.