Christmas shows how serious God is about change …

Most of us have a favorite brand of jeans.

What’s more comfortable in our down time than an old pair of denim?

For years, I used to prefer Levi’s, and many people still favor the brand today. But you may have never heard how Levi’s made a key change to their jeans long ago. Here’s the story as originally told in “Everybody’s Business” …

Picture a scene from the Old West, sometime in the 1870s. Weary cowboys in dusty Levi’s gather around a blazing campfire after a day on the open range. The lonely howl of a coyote counterpoints the notes of a guitar as the moon floats serenely overhead. Suddenly a bellow of pain shatters the night, as a cowpoke leaps away from the fire, dancing in agony. Hot-Rivet Syndrome has claimed another victim. In those days, Levi’s were made, as they had been from the first days of Levi Strauss, with copper rivets at stress points to provide extra strength. On these original Levi’s — model 501 — the crotch rivet was the critical one: when cowboys crouched too long beside the campfire, the rivet grew uncomfortably hot. For years the brave men of the West suffered this curious occupational hazard. Then, in 1933, Walter Haas, Sr., president of Levi Strauss, went camping in his Levi 501’s.

He was crouched by a crackling campfire in the High Sierras, drinking in the pure mountain air, when he fell prey to Hot-Rivet Syndrome. He consulted with professional wranglers in his party. Had they suffered the same mishap? An impassioned YES was the reply. Haas vowed that the offending rivet must go, and at their next meeting the board of directors voted it into extinction.

Some things must change!

Never is that fact more lavishly displayed than at Christmas, which is a grand demonstration of how serious God is about changing us.

Sin broke our relationship with God; God wanted nothing more than to reconcile our relationship with Him. So we see in scripture that before He created anything, He devised a plan for changing us, the unreconciled sinners, into reconciled saints so that we could once again have a relationship with Him.

But to make that happen, God’s plan called for Him to change Himself! At Christmas, God entered the world He created as a man, setting into action His plan that some 33 years later would accomplish everything necessary for OUR change so that we could be reconciled to Him again.

The old saying that God accepts us just as we are isn’t true, we’re not “acceptable” to God as people who prefer sin rather than holiness. God does RECEIVE us just as we are — sinful warts and all — but with the absolute intention of changing us into the likeness of His Son … the Son who changed Himself by wrapping Himself in human flesh to make our change possible!

“My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” Galatians 2:20.

God was willing to make an amazing change in order that we could be changed, rather amazingly, through Him!

“So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord — who is the Spirit — makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image,” 2 Corinthians 3:18.

Christmas is a loud reminder of our need to die to sin and self, and to be transformed by the Holy Spirit, so that we can be reconciled to God forever.

Scotty