As a child, I loved Santa.  No, I adored Santa.  Since I was a “good” girl, he and I were very tight.  In anticipation of his arrival on Christmas morning, my teeth would chatter so much I could hardly speak.  And I was his biggest defender on the school playground whenever anyone dared to question  his existence.

Of course Santa existed!  We were best buds! BFFs!  (No offense to those of you on the Naughty List.)

My loyalty to Santa persisted until the fifth grade, when I could no longer suppress the nagging feeling that I just might be the last remaining Santa follower in my class.  Fearfully, I approached my mom one fateful December day with THE QUESTION.

Does Santa really exist?

She gently told me the truth.  I still didn’t want to believe it.  Being the tender-hearted type, I was traumatized by this “death” of someone I had dearly loved.  The sight of jolly old St. Nick can still evoke the painful memory of that betrayal to this day.

Embedded in the heart of every child, every person, is a deep desire to be known and loved.  As a college student, years later, I would learn that my devotion to Santa was really a misdirected yearning for God.  Perhaps Blaise Pascal, 17th century French philosopher, physicist, and mathematician, said it best:

“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”

This world serves up many God-substitutes, things that promise to deliver like the delight of a Christmas morning.  Only in the end they leave us dejected and disillusioned, clutching an empty stocking full of holes.

In God, however, we encounter One whose love for us is real and constant.  In Jesus we find a friend who “sticks closer than a brother.”  In His Spirit we discover true fulfillment and satisfaction.  And unlike Santa, you do not have to “be good” to earn His approval.

God really does exist.

BELIEVE.

Let Him win and fill your heart.  Become His friend and defender.  Long for His arrival, like a little child with chattering teeth.

Take it from a former Santa Baby, now a Friend of God.

He will not disappoint you.

*For the Scriptural basis for these statements see:  Romans 8:38-39, Proverbs 18:24, John 7:38, Ephesians 2:8, Romans 5:5.