Daily devotion – No room for Jesus at Christmas.
(Mark 9:33–37; Luke 9:46–48)
1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, 3 and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.
As we enter the lead-up to the Christmas season, my mind often returns to my own childhood and the joy-filled anticipation that came as Christmas approached.
Christmas Eve services are vivid in my memory. Families from the neighbourhood gathered at church, excited and filled with an expectant joy. All the children knew one another—we attended the same primary school. There were no strangers. And you knew all your relatives would be coming to your house—no one was overseas, no one was working shift work.
The world we live in today seems so completely different in so many ways.
Yet perhaps the greatest difference is this: the Christmas season has become smothered under the routine busyness our lives have accepted as normal. Few have time to be with family. Work schedules and modern demands set the rhythm, and we have slowly surrendered ourselves to a kind of slavery. And the part of life that suffers most in this surrender is the family.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day no longer hold their place in Australian culture as they once did. Why? Because as a nation we have neglected God, neglected the first commandment, and Jesus’ words no longer resonate:
Matthew 6:33 — “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
When did this shift happen? What went wrong?
It didn’t happen overnight. It happened slowly, quietly, as day by day we surrendered what belonged to the Lord and handed it over to mammon.
Jesus warned us plainly:
Matthew 6:24 — “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Mammon is an Aramaic word meaning riches—riches personified as a rival to God.
We all know that on the night Jesus was born there was no room at the inn in Bethlehem. Today, the tragedy is not an innkeeper who has no room for Jesus—it is the overwhelmed, overworked Australian home that has unknowingly taken the innkeeper’s place.
For many homes in our nation, there will be no peace this Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, because the Prince of Peace, the Babe born in a manger, has been moved aside to a place that exists only in our memories of the past.