Christmas comes to tell us that what we long for deep in our souls is a reality.
Christmas 1995 was a very magical Christmas for me. On that Christmas, my wife, Stacy, and I were awaiting our firstborn son. Our hearts were warmed that Christmas. We felt something different. We felt a bond with Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. When the carolers sang “unto us a child is born,” it touched our hearts in a different way. For unto us, our child was coming. When we heard the radio playing “Love has come for the world to know,” we knew what they were singing about. We were being embraced by that mystery at the heart of us all: Love. A mother shares more than her womb with a child. The blood coursing through a mother’s veins to her baby’s pulsating heart is carried there by more than biological forces. The messenger is Love, a Love we did not initiate or create. Love was already there before we arrived. And that Christmas, we were being invited to taste more fully of this Love, to share the secret of the Universe, the warm glow of Love. Love was already there; we were just coming to the party.
Because we were witnessing the miracle of life being formed from nothing, we had no doubt that God was able to inhabit humanity, that a child could be conceived by the touch of God alone. Because our hearts were buoyed by the newness of the life to come for our baby, we sang all the more loudly of the “dawn of redeeming grace.” Our faith in the miraculous, in the magic of life itself, and the sheer power of God was elevated to new heights.
GOD HAS OUR ATTENTION
That December, I understood why Christmas affects so many people. There is something about the birth of Jesus that touches us as nothing else can. There is something in the singing of “holy infant so tender and mild” and “the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay” that tugs at our emotions. Babies. Tender, tiny babies. Babies make us cry! Babies make us laugh! Babies thrill our hearts! Babies touch our souls because we see in babies the preciousness of life itself. A baby brings such great promise, such renewed hope, such gentle assurance that life is, after all, good. We care for babies because of their helplessness. We coo over babies because of their sweetness, innocence, and beauty. And we are sobered by babies because we realize that we, too, at one time were babies. We also were born with innocence, sweetness, and beauty. We were all babies at one time.
The birth of Jesus touches us in a way that helps us understand more deeply the death and resurrection of Jesus. As we think of the little Lord Jesus lying in a cow trough turned cradle, as we imagine Him cooing, sighing, and breathing ever so lightly, stillness steeps over our souls. The angelic voices of the children’s choir singing “O Holy Night” echo off the church walls and down to the sacred solitude of our hearts. Silent night. Holy night. All is calm. All is bright.
God has our attention. Speak, God. We will listen. And He says not a word. He just comes. He comes to us. He comes as we are. He comes in complete vulnerability. He comes as a baby. The God Whom we thought was far off is near. The God Whom we thought could not understand, understands completely. The God Whom we thought was so distant from daily life is involved in every human experience. Our God was delivered through the birth canal into a stench-filled stable. Because we were all babies at one time, God also became a baby. God has forever knit Himself unreservedly with humanity. God is Emmanuel. God is with us.
THE MANGER IS THE SIGN
Holy infant, so tender and mild. As I peer into the manger and see the Baby coo, a thought rushes over me. I cannot think about it for the shame it brings, but I must. I cannot bear to imagine it, but it is my only hope. For why has this baby been born? Why has this Son come into the world? The manger was the preview of all that would follow. The manager is a “sign” pointing to the nearness of God’s Love, the Love that will not stop until His work is accomplished. His work is reconciliation between God and humanity, bringing peace between humans. The way of the manger is the way Jesus lived his entire life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16, 17). This world is a mess and rightfully needs judgment. I am a mess and rightfully need judgment. But Love finds a way to turn judgment into redemption, shame into reconciliation. The judgment I rightfully deserve falls on the God of Love instead of me. He takes the fall for me. The manger pointed to that. The way of the manger is the way of the cross, the way of sacrificial love. “This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son in sacrificial love so we would not be condemned” (1 John 4:10).
The Love of God never quits. His Love knows no bounds. The pulsating heart of the Universe is the Love of God that stoops to share every hurt and heartache, every failure and fear, every pain and, yes, every punishment. This is the God who goes to your corner of shame and regret and whispers, “You really are forgiven. You are free, free from the past, free for a new future. Please, now, please come to me. Please, come to the party.”
I am on my knees, because all I can do in the midst of such sacrifice is worship.