We all enter this season of Advent with our hearts and minds set once more on achieving the perfect Christmas. But rarely does everything come off as planned. So what else is new? We know that first Christmas was anything but smooth. No jingle bells, no festive parties, no glittering packages with flowery bows. It was pretty much a mess all the way around.
How would you like to be nine months pregnant when the IRS suddenly orders you to take a last-minute trip? Off to the next state, away from your doctor, your mother, your home, your well-stocked nursery…just so you and your husband can stand in line with hundreds of other disgusted people filling out paperwork and paying taxes.
This was not what you had in mind for your first experience of childbirth. And did we mention there was no place to stay? Your desperate husband finally arranges for a shed off of some back alley so at least you’ll have a roof over your head.
And then, sure enough, the labor pains begin. “…and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7 (NRSV)
What Mary and Joseph only half-realized at the time…and what we often miss…is that Christmas is not about everything being perfect. It is rather quite the opposite…God stepping into a messed-up world with an offbeat approach to making things better.
There, my friends, is the Good News…that God continues to step into our lives with the intent of making all things new. And of course the greatest gift we can offer to anyone is this same willingness to help make things better. How we go about doing that will be as different as each one of us is one from another. That’s what makes it so wonderful…every gift is different and every gift is precious. So may God bless you each and everyone as you give yourself to a world in great need of what you have to offer. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you ALL!
Pastor Andy