Meditations on Christmas
Christmas
Thoughts
Madonna and Angels, Fra Angelico (1387-1455, Italian)
Christmas Is Not for Cowards
6 "This is what the LORD Almighty
says: 'In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the
sea and the dry land. 7 I will shake all nations, and the desired of
all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,' says the LORD
Almighty. (Haggai 2:6-7, NIV)
There
is nothing inherently soothing about Christmas. Experience teaches us that
chestnuts roasting on an open fire is nostalgic aspiration. Christmas is a time
of stress, hurry, guilt, and fatigue. It takes courage to shake loose from the
expectations of our idyllic images and experience what the shepherds first
embraced: glory! In its rawest form, the word glory refers to weight. As
we said in the sixties and seventies, “That’s heavy man.” God said that in
fulfilling His promises, He would shake things up to the very foundations—the
entire cosmos, all of creation.
In
coming to earth, God stirs up foundations and nations so that nothing can
assume it is in its rightful place. All powers and dominions are startled out
of their complacency and anyone taking Christmas seriously must ask himself or
herself, “Where do I stand with the God who made all of this and can
disassemble it in a moment?” Asked and answered in Jesus Christ!
Rattled? Good. That what Christmas does to us when it does its best. It takes us a bit off balance so that we can be as surprised by joy as the shepherds were. It shakes us from our lethargy so that in the Prince of Peace, we might find real peace. Shake, rattle, and roll and Merry Christmas to you all!
Finding the Wonder
Christmas and
children have been used in literature as symbols of wonder. Brennan Manning
often quotes from Rabbi Abraham Heschel who, on his deathbed, confessed that he
had not asked for any of the ordinary gifts of life from God. He had asked for
wonder and God had supplied it. What a joyous testimony to carry us into this
season!
So,
where and how do we find the wonder? How do we come to the place where we can
embrace the unknown with childlike joy
and find, in the mundane, a place of new seeking and discovery? Let us learn
from a dying rabbi and a little child discovering a goat for the first time in
a petting zoo.
From
our first teacher let us learn that wonder is a gift from God. We can pray for
it and receive it from Him. God is clothed in glory and mystery. He takes joy
in our seeking Him with whole heart and a fully engaged life. So, ask, seek,
and find.
Second,
from my little niece, Sarah who doesn’t know me, a picture inspired me. She is
innocently and curiously reaching out to explore something new in her
unexplored world. She knows what we do not—that there are not explanations for
every phenomenon that we can comprehend. But that does not stop her from
seeking and experiencing life in all its fullness.
So, the answer is deceptively simple. If you would know wonder, ask for it and reach out for it with a seeking heart. God will supply the wonder. You just need to show up.
The
Dream that Came True
“But while he thought
on these things, behold, the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a dream,
saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife:
for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. “ –Matthew 1:20
It
was the kind of conception that was hard to conceive of. Joseph is silent
during this transaction with the angel. No words are recorded. If he spoke, he
must have deemed anything he had to say unimportant, because he reported only
God’s words through the angel.
For
some reason, miracles often evoke fear, perhaps because God voice speaks so
powerfully through them and we are overwhelmed by His glory. This was a miracle
of reduction. All of God’s glory would be compressed into one tiny little baby
and His developing body would be planted into the womb of Mary.
Joseph
was asked to come along as a willing and faithful participant in this process,
to take Mary as his wife, to exercise restraint and patience, to accept any
shame, humiliation, and ridicule that might come his way, and to rejoice with
her in what God was doing. He was asked to take a giant step of faith.
People
raise their eyebrows at the notion of the Incarnation, but they also turn a
skeptical eye toward testimonies of new birth. The church boldly declares that
men and women can be born of the Spirit from above and that God can transform
the life of the most miserable sinner into the most useful saint. The world
scoffs, but the true believer keeps testifying to the power of the
miracle. That is because we know it is
true. We have experienced it. Like Joseph, we are dumbfounded and receive the
gift with joy.
Joy to
the world! The Lord has come!
Let every
heart prepare Him room.
(Isaac Watts, 1719)
O, Come, Let Us Adore Him
Peering eyes barely opened, recognized his
mother from a bed of straw. He squirmed, tentatively exploring his world, not
knowing it would so soon reject him or that for it, he would lay down his life.
Yet to discover what in eternity he knew, that he was the Savior-Sovereign, he
whimpered as any infant would and cried out for suckle. So vulnerable was the
Son of God, so frail the Son of Man and we did esteem him stricken, smitten,
afflicted by God.
Crucified from the foundations of the earth, he
emptied himself of glory. Yet, glory pursued him. He took on the form of a
servant as angels stood by awaiting his slightest summons. He subjected himself
to temptation, but shunned sin. He walked among men as a man, but his divinity
could not be hidden. He prayed as we must pray and taught us in so doing to
embrace the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. There he lay, a bundle of need
who had hitherto known no need. Packaged in his person were the potent possibilities
of reconciliation and redemption.
Here lay an offering, wiggling beneath
swaddling clothes, wrapped up and carefully placed under every family's tree.
Here lay the concentrated reality of all God's
love for humankind.
Here was a promise fulfilled, a hope realized,
a purpose unfolding before our very eyes - and we esteemed him not.
How we have marginalized this child. How we
have assigned him but a season of sentimental reflection and generalized good
wishes. How we have misunderstood, misrepresented, or misappropriated the
meaning of his coming. God manifest, He was and is and nothing less. Emmanuel -
more than a pleasant sounding melody - it is the miracle of incarnation. God
is, absolutely, irrevocably, undeniably, and unambiguously, with us.
A child - weak and hungry – he was born into a world without incubators or Pampers or formula. He was born into a world of high infant mortality with an elevated threat on the Herodian horizon. For each who welcomed him, there were companies of soldiers seeking to snuff out his life. Soon to be on the run, a fugitive from his own people, he would return again and again and ultimately in a final show of death-defying atonement.
He is the Lord we laud, the Master we magnify,
and the Savior we salute on this night of nights. We have no gold, frankincense
nor myrrh to bring as acts of homage. We bring empty hands extended toward him
that he might fill them with his own gifts. We fall down before him and worship
with broken and joyful hearts, celebrating the power of the pregnant paradox -
they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
Gaze upon him in wonder this night. Sing to him a lullaby of praise. O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
(Luke 1:78) Through the tender mercy of our
God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,
I would nearly burst with excitement as I
anticipated the visits of distant relatives. Their suitcases always contained
gifts. Their stories always transported me to distant places. And their jokes
always seemed funnier than any I had heard for a long time.
I remember the emotions of wonderment and joy
and, at times, disappointment when our guests suddenly had a change of plans
and could not come.
The waiting would start all over again.
God’s people had been waiting for a long, long
time. Most had stopped watching – stopped believing that He would really come.
Their hearts had grown cold, their hopes had dimmed or even died.
Still others prayed and remained alert. They
knew the visitation would come, that the dayspring would spring forth and hope
would arise on the earth. They were waiting for Jesus and knew it not. To such,
He appeared in the fullness of time.
Such tender mercy that God shows toward those
who toil through the night. Dayspring comes. It bursts forth in the darkness
and illuminates every hidden thing. With Him are freedom, hope, consolation,
and joy. In Him all of our longings are answered. Anticipation is rewarded and
gifts are abundant.
Come,
Thou long expected Jesus,
Born to
set Thy people free.
From our
fears and sins release us.
Let us
find our rest in Thee.
Hope of
all the earth Thou art,
Dear
desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.
O, Come, O, Come Emmanuel
(Isaiah
God Himself has given a sign to His people. As
we barrel down the highway toward Christmas, the signs of the season are
everywhere and proliferating. Lights, greenery, swirling red and white stripes,
even ornamental reminders of the manger, the sheep, the shepherds, and the
angels adorn the public squares of our cities and towns. There are signs no one
is stopping to read.
They are signs of a heart cry. If we but look just a
bit beneath the surface, we will see pain, longing, and confusion. People do
not know to call their need, salvation, but they know that they do have a need.
They do not know that the answer is Immanuel, God with us, but they know they
are lonely. We must see the signs of their brokenness and show them the sign of
His presence.
They are signs of hearing for God has heard. God
has indeed heard the heart cries of people. As He heard the crisis of the
Israelites in
They are signs of hope. People seldom pray
without a sense that they might be heard. They hold out some inkling of hope
with every strand of tinsel that they hang. When they sign a card that says,
“peace on earth,” they are entertaining the notion that peace is a possibility.
As Paul stood in Athens and reinterpreted the
statue to the unknown god and named Him as the true, one and only God of
the universe, let us recapture and declare the meaning of the signs around us
and use them to point to the One sign He has given us from Heaven.
O come, o
come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel
Who waits
in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice,
rejoice. Emmanuel shall come to thee Oh
No
tree is stronger than its roots.
The
heart of each of our pursuits
Is
truth, raw and unrefined,
Longing
for more, love inclined,
Centered
in the blessed incarnation,
In
the fertile soil of God's most gracious invitation
Come
to the manger.
Come
© Copyright, 2007, Thomas B. Sims, All Rights Reserved
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