Christmas Reflection: the Real Holiday Story
December has arrived and it is an exciting month of the year. As the end of the year draws near we can get very busy with celebrations, holiday preparations and end year functions. If you are like me it can be easy to forget the amazing gift worth celebrating in this month of the year. It can be easy to miss the anticipation and the expectation of something amazing coming to our world and in the christmas reflection essay I want to share some viewpoints.
We have a fantastic gift…a gift like no other. That’s right…the gift is Star Wars episode 8 being released! On December 14 this greatly anticipated addition to the Star Wars world will burst onto our movies screens and I, for one, can’t wait. I love the story, I love the excitement, I love light sabers.
But when all is said and done and watched, that is all it is; a well told story with some fictitious characters and an all powerful yet impersonal force guiding all things in the universe. It is an interesting thought; one that is only entertaining and far from being truly life transforming. However it does highlight what I believe to be a common approach that people bring to the really exciting thing that does happen in December each year – the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. This approach either sees this historical occurrence as merely an entertaining story full of fictitious characters, or sees it as somewhat true but with a ‘not so personal’ God governing the universe. Could this kind of thinking flavor your or your friends approach to Christmas?
In the late 80’s and early 90’s (when all the great music was…wink), a song by Bette Midler was played a great deal. It was named ‘From a Distance’. In this song the writer suggests (perhaps unintentionally) that God is watching from a distance. And from a distance the world looks harmonious, peaceful and full of joy. The implication is that God is impersonal, uncaring and distant because if God were looking closely He would see the distress our world is in; he would see our pain. The reality of the events of Christmas, however, proves the Bette Midler song to be incorrect. Among the many things worth celebrating about the true events of Christmas is that they demonstrate that God desires to be up close and personal with us. He is not an impersonal force, is not a distant deity, but rather up close and personally with us.
One of the names for Jesus, given by the prophets who foretold his coming, is ‘Immanuel’ which means ‘God with us’. On that first Christmas over 2000 years ago God drew near…he drew close to our mess and reality by becoming one of us. It doesn’t get much closer than that!
As we draw toward another Christmas season I am challenged to focus on the wonder of God amongst us through the coming of Jesus Christ. He came as a babe, yet grew to be a man and demonstrated to all the ‘with God’ life. Jesus would then take the sin and brokenness of the world upon Himself and give His life save ours. Jesus rose from the dead, conquering it forever so that we may know life in God everlasting. This is the action of a very personal God who loves each and every person in His creation.
