Christmas. It’s kinda hard to explain, if you ask me. People have all kinds of different ideas about it. Is it a shopping frenzy, a magical day for children, or truly the birth of our Savior? Sometimes in our world today, I’m not even sure that I know. It’s like…a big strand of colored lights that you were too lazy to put away properly last year, and now they’re coming back to bite you. Literally. I’m convinced that last year’s lights somehow morph into this year’s nightmares sometime in mid-July. It’s tempting to throw the whole mess out and start again – perhaps cancel Christmas, which seems to be a thing going around this year – but I don’t think that that’s what God mean for us to do. After all, that’s not what He did with us…and we were a bigger mess than any old box of lights!
Tonight I was at home alone eating (what else?) a box of Kraft mac-and-cheese for dinner. In our family room, which is right beside the kitchen, we have a large nativity scene surrounded by a Christmas garland in the middle of the mantelpiece. It’s really cool, because I feel like it keeps the true meaning of Christmas right at the forefront. Anyway, as I was getting up from the table to put my plate in the dishwasher, the center of the display (Mary, Joseph, and Jesus) caught my eye. The song “What Child is this?” was playing in the background. For a second I just had to sit back down and think about something.
How awesome is it that Christmas happened in the first place? I mean, come on? I know a song that puts it this way: “This baby cries and for the first time the world hears the voice of God weep.” (Natalie Grant – “One Child”) Pause for just a moment at that. For the first time the world hears the voice of God weep. Can you imagine the voice of God in the screams of a newborn infant? The hands that spanned the universe in those chubby, grasping little fingers? The eyes that saw creation in those of a baby? This tiny little thing, just like my baby cousin. The Son of God.
What?
I guess the real question is, why? Why do we still celebrate the birth of a baby in a cold, lonely stable to two poor parents soiled by days of travel? I guess my answer would be – I don’t know. If you think I’m going to preach at you now, you’re thankfully wrong. That’s honestly it.
I don’t know.
Way back at the beginning of time, humans messed up really bad. God gave us one rule, and we broke it. Pretty stupid, right? I think so. Why didn’t God throw us out like my dad is so often tempted to do with old Christmas lights and start over? I don’t know. I don’t know why He didn’t make the flood an end-all and just finish this. I don’t know why, instead, He sent His one and only son into the limits of human flesh to make up for what we did wrong. It’s sorta absurd, really. It doesn’t make sense. But it’s true, just the same. And that’s really the important part.
We make these nice little clean, beautiful nativity scenes to decorate our house with, and somehow we trick ourselves into thinking that that’s as deep as it gets. I happen to think the Christmas story is more. A whole lot more. Hang with me for just a sec. What does this sound like to you?
In the dead of night, a ragged man and his scandalously pregnant virgin fiancé stumbled into the stable behind an inn. Seconds away from giving birth, the fifteen-year-old girl had no professional help and nearly nothing to shield her from the bitter cold. Somehow, she survived what many in her day did not.
On a hillside outside of town, a group of poor shepherds were just laying down around their dying campfires to get a few precious hours of sleep when the sky above them exploded with light and noise. The men were at first too shocked to comprehend, and yet somehow the voice from above seemed to draw them in. It spoke of peace, of goodwill, and of a child who had come to change the world.
That very night, thousands and thousands of miles away in the ruins of the once-great Persian Empire, a few old astrologers were awakened by a star which seems to outshine the others. Such a star could mean only one thing – a great king had been born! Rushing to their scrolls, they found the words of the Israelite prophet Daniel, who’d served the Babylonian kings. He spoke of a great king to be born in Israel – the greatest king of all, in fact. One who would save the world!
In the damp cold of the cave-like stable, the man and his young fiancé are only beginning to see the chain of events which this birth has set in motion. And yet they cannot see everything…they cannot, for example, see the hate and jealousy brewing in the heart of one who could take away their home, their child, and their very lives…
Okay, so we all know that’s the Christmas story, but don’t you think it could also be on the back of a novel somewhere? I think we reread these familiar passages over and over at Christmas, thinking them stuffy and boring when in reality God was trying to convey one of the most exciting nights in human history.
So I’m not really sure what you got from this, if anything. There’s not much of a point, it’s just kind of my thoughts scrawled in a blog post. But I guess I’ve succeeded if I’ve gotten you to think this Christmas. Think about a very exciting and yet totally absurd-sounding story which saved our lives. Think about the real cold, hungry, screaming baby behind those pretty little ceramic representations. Think about, well, what’s underneath all of the brightly colored paper and tangled-up lights. If Christmas means nothing more than the newest toy and those ridiculous inflatable Santas that people put in their front yards, we’re kind of stuck. I’d just like to suggest that it means much more.
