Advent Conspiracy

So I wrote about 2 speakers that came to my school not too long ago. Their names are Shane Claiborne and Mike Yankosky. I'm still working on reading Claiborne's book and it continues to inspire me and the way I live out my faith. Well Christmas was brought up by both speakers in the same way. I have wrote about this as well, but I'll just restate that I have definitely been convicted this season. How did we let ourselves get lost in the cultural view of Christmas with consummerism. CHRIST should really be the reason for the season. I mean yes, Christians do want to show that they celebrate this time of the year because our Savior was born, but it really doesn't show in my opinion most of the time. I'm speaking to myself when I talk about it like this, but if we all just took a step back to observe the way we live at Christmas...I think a lot of us would really be ashamed.

Today, Christmas has become this holiday where people think for themselves and what they want to get or what kind of sales they can find. The Bible doesn't even say anything about giving gifts for Christmas! This kind of reminds me of those birds in Finding Nemo that only know how to say "mine, mine, mine" over and over again. We are falling deeper into consummerism everytday. There are so many suffering without food, clean clothes, shelter, proper health care. I'm not saying that gift giving and the fun stuff should be eliminated completely...I just want Jesus to be seen. Shane told us about a new movement called the "Advent Conspiracy" while he was here. A church that started it decided to fill the floors of their church with manure on their Christmas Day service to let them see what Christmas was probably like when Jesus was born in that manger with barn animals....so all the members (most of whom dress nicely on this day) sat in poop during the service. I can only imagine what that was like and I bet none of them will ever forget that Christmas. Here is a video from them that I believe really gives the message of what I've been saying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqqj1v-ZBU&eurl=http://www.adventconspiracy.org/&feature=player_embedded Check it out!

God Bless!