{"id":5213,"date":"2016-12-19T19:04:10","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T00:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/roadsfromemmaus\/?p=5213"},"modified":"2016-12-19T19:04:45","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T00:04:45","slug":"want-christmas-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/asd\/2016\/12\/19\/want-christmas-year\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do I Want for Christmas This Year?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/asd\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2016\/12\/christmas-present.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"574\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5220\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/asd\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2016\/12\/christmas-present.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/asd\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2016\/12\/christmas-present-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/asd\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2016\/12\/christmas-present-768x441.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 78px;line-height: 52px;float: left;font-family: times\">I<\/span>t&#8217;s a question we get asked a lot, and it&#8217;s a question that gets harder to answer as I get older.  I have an Amazon wishlist, of course.  But, really, I do know what would make me feel like it was a really <i>good<\/i> Christmas.  I know exactly what I want.  I&#8217;m afraid it&#8217;s a long list.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I want:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I want for Christians to be in church worshiping the Lord, God and Savior Who was born for our sakes to destroy the power of death.\n<li>I want for families to pursue peace and family harmony by making Jesus Christ central in their family schedules.\n<li>I want to pray a lot better and a lot more consistently.\n<li>I want for Christians to stop acting like politics is more important than prayer.\n<li>I want for petty, transient things to stop mattering so much to me and to my country.\n<li>I want for people who say that their faith really matters to them to start acting like it.\n<li>I want for husbands and wives to see that they don&#8217;t have to solve everything or even feel in love.\n<li>I want for husbands and wives to see that their spouse isn&#8217;t responsible to make them feel happy.\n<li>I want for husbands and wives to see that they don&#8217;t even have to be best friends.\n<li>I want for parents to see that their kids aren&#8217;t responsible to make them feel successful or adequate or appreciated.\n<li>I want for parents to believe that an education in Christian life for their children is their first and only real task as parents.\n<li>I want for pilgrimage to be more critical and more consistent than vacation.\n<li>I want for spiritual life to be &#8220;a thing,&#8221; that is, a thing that people are working on&mdash;a project rather than an accessory.\n<li>I want for my spiritual life to be my <i>biggest<\/i> project.\n<li>I want to hear more Christians saying to co-workers, coaches, teachers, friends and family these two sentences together:  <i>I can&#8217;t.  We have church.<\/i>\n<li>I want to meet kids who know more about the people in the Bible than the people in a cartoon, a sports team or a video game.\n<li>I want to be automatically kind rather than automatically defensive.\n<li>I want to see church members whose first question is &#8220;How can I help?&#8221; rather than &#8220;You know what we should be doing?&#8221;\n<li>I want for the government of my country to stop acting like it can and should fix everything.\n<li>I want for me and my countrymen to stop acting like we can and should fix everything.\n<li>I want for the average annual gift to the church even to rival the average annual cost of cable TV or eating out.\n<li>I want people to see that history, especially Church history, matters.\n<li>I want people to see that doctrine matters and has a real effect on life.\n<li>I want people to see that morality isn&#8217;t something holding you down but something giving you strength.\n<li>I want prayer to be more about meeting God and less about asking something from God.\n<li>I want people to know that God really does love them just as they are.\n<li>I want people to see that God&#8217;s love doesn&#8217;t leave them as they are.\n<li>I want for hope to be understood as something we have in the resurrection of Jesus, not in &#8220;the future of our country,&#8221; any political outcome or personal ambition.\n<li>I want to see myself as a minor character in Jesus&#8217; story rather than Him as a minor character in <i>my<\/i> story.\n<li>I want the story of the death-conquering King of Kings to be what defines us more than any other story.<\/ul>\n<p>These are some things that I want.  I think any one of them would really make my Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>What do you want for Christmas this year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a question we get asked a lot, and it&#8217;s a question that gets harder to answer as I get older. I have an Amazon wishlist, of course. But, really, I do know what would make me feel like it was a really good Christmas. I know exactly what I want. I&#8217;m afraid it&#8217;s a long list. Here&#8217;s what I want: I want for\u2026 <a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/asd\/2016\/12\/19\/want-christmas-year\/\">  <i class=\"fa fa-arrow-circle-right\"><\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":5220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[751],"tags":[606],"class_list":["post-5213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-spirituality","tag-christmas"],"yoast_head":"<title>What Do I Want for Christmas This Year? &#8212; Fr. 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