This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be. ~William Willimon
Christmas is a puzzle, not a pageant.
Christmas is a mystery, not a platform or position, a posture of defiance against an unbelieving world.
Christmas is a paradox, meant to leave us dumb-struck by a gift we didn’t ask for, the gift we needed most of all.
Christmas isn’t for the smug, the satisfied, the sure. So stop humming the melody and listen to the words instead. Let your certainty be rattled. Let your heart find a humbler place.
O holy Child of Bethlehem descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
Something has to die before Jesus can be born in us. For we have remade God in our image. It’s time to let him out of the box, to empty him of our narrow assumptions. Let God be God, not a bigger version of us.
Don’t be so sure he is offended by what offends you.
Don’t be so sure he is impressed by what makes you wildly cheer.
Don’t be so sure you know how you would have responded to his coming. That you would have kneeled and not jeered. That you would have wept with joy, not crossed to the other side of the street.
Not sure is the best place to be at Christmas.
Because then we will kneel before the manger and really look. What will we see?
A Puzzle
A baby. An infant, needy and weak. God come down in tears, in hunger, in restless nights, a mother’s soft arms his only dwelling. This prince of heaven watched over by livestock. This brilliant rabbi sharing meals with the despised. This miracle-worker avoiding the applause of the crowd. This eloquent preacher refusing the perks of the popular. This most powerful of all humans allowing human arrogance to do its worst, for our sake.
Every year we forget. We slather our presents, programs and pageants on ourselves when God preferred to present to us a puzzle.
Embrace The Puzzle
Do you long to savor a moment of the true Christmas?
Sit in quiet and remember the infant you still are. Be hungry. Be needy. Be weak and helpless to be anyone important. Recognize your poverty, your limited understanding, the many ways you have yet to grow. Be small, curious, easily delighted and honest in your dismay. Turn your face to love and refuse to look away.
Is it hard? Do you feel more comfortable in the box seats of the pageant? If God stooped to become a child, he can empower you to do the same.
Merry Christmas, my treasured friends. Thank you for joining me as we question and chew on the things that really matter. May you be blessed as you have so blessed me. When life calms down here, we will return to our Alphabet Adagio. Meanwhile, may your Christmas and New Year be puzzling in the best of all ways. Love, Janet.
