Well, Christmas anticipation is thick in the air.

Christmas music dominates the airwaves and the smell of pumpkin spice permeates everything.

A beautiful light brightens the night sky and in less than one week from today, Christmas

will be done.

All the gifts will be unwrapped and worn or played with or returned to the store for

cash or credit, and we're going to take the trees down and the lights down and we'll

toss them out or we'll box them up for another year.

And it happens every year.

There's this subtle sense, this subtle pang of let down.

And you can call me a scrooge to bring it up this time of the year, but I find the sensation

rather predictable.

Perhaps it's because we have overspent and underslept and maybe over eaten, whatever the

cause is, Christmas never seems to live up to the build up.

So why is that?

To answer this question a couple of years back, Pastor Matt Chandler preached an Advent

sermon on Zephaniah 3, verses 14-20 in a sermon titled, God's Protection and Delight.

And the sermon includes an insightful and helpful meditation on this point to radius and

to steady us for this season.

Here now is a little clip from Pastor Matt Chandler, a survivor of brain cancer, preaching

from Zephaniah chapter 3.

In verse 15, the text says, why do we sing and shout and clap and rejoice with all our

hearts?

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