Christmas. The time of year when we think we have to buy a present for every person we know, bake all the cookie recipes known to mankind, completely redecorate the house (including risking life and limb on our roof just for the neighbors’ amusement!), and mail a card to everyone we’ve ever met. How do we stay sane, and how does God want us to deal with it all?

Let me tell you a Costco story. (Don’t worry, it doesn’t include a “missing person’s report” from the Costco Christmas Craziness!) A few years ago, a friend of mine came home from Costco with this cool little new gizmo called a “Roomba”. You’ve likely seen these in the recent past. It’s a little robotic vacuum cleaner that goes around and vacuums on its own! So my friend (not the most patient guy) pulls it out of the box. And even though his wife – while plugging in the docking station – mentions that they should charge it first, he just sets it on the carpet and turns it on. Apparently it had a little juice in its battery, because just like the commercial – “beep beep beep” – it starts to magically move around the room sucking up whatever it deemed worthy of being eaten… for about 3 minutes. That’s when whatever power was in the battery hit empty. Then it does something even more magical – “beep beep beep” – it turns right around in its tracks, and heads straight for the charging station, which the wife had placed in the corner! It scurried right back and docked itself on the charging station because it knew when it was out of energy!

You know what? That little Roomba might be smarter than most of us Christians! When it was nearly empty of its charge, power, and energy, it was smart enough to realize that’s not a useful condition to be in. It recognized that not only is “running on empty” a bad idea, but it knew enough to go home, re-dock, recharge, and refresh.

Christmas is a RUSH. The mall. The church services. The school play. The parties. However, we’ll be at our best when our batteries are charged. We’ll survive all the busyness of the season if we’ll give God time every day. Come home to Him. Connect to Him. Dock to Him. Charge up in Him. Get His word in our heart. Spend some time in prayer. Then, when we’re recharged, we’ll be at our best in every other setting and situation. Moral of the story, let’s try to be smarter than a $200 vacuum cleaner. 🙂 Merry Christmas!