This does not fit with the modern idea that we are all getting through to God in our own way. No, says Matthew. God has got through to us in this way. And Jesus is no great teacher, no guru, no peer of Mohammed or Gandhi. He is God with us. That is the essential claim on which Christianity is built. It is a claim which cannot be abandoned without abandoning the faith entirely. –Michael Green
I think it’s hard, really, to reflect on Christmas.
Many times we’ve heard the account of the journey to Bethlehem and the birth in the manger…maybe too many times. We recognize the Three Wise Men from our nativity scenes and we’ve sung the Carols year after year. I think it’s hard, really, to get proper perspective on the Christmas event…not just every year, but EVER. How are we to even begin understanding that God came down, that the Creator entered His creation, that Timelessness and Limitlessness took form in a time and place, that the hands of He who sculpted mountains and painted oceans could barely cling to his mother’s finger, that the great Sustainer of Life became totally dependent on the care of His earthly parents, nuzzling in their arms that Christmas morning?
I think Christmas tends to evade us in one of 2 ways. Either we believe conceptually in the miracle and get lost in the traditions or the traditions have somehow kept us from the miracle altogether. In the first case, we may celebrate even in a very positive way—believing it’s all about giving, for example—but in the process lose the Gift that is for us. In the second case, when Christmas is synonymous with trimming trees and a jolly old man in a red suit, we remove the Big God from it altogether. We’ve tamed Him into images we’re more capable of wrapping our heads around. It’s easy to see how this God could come for a visit…
But the God of Christmas, the True God, isn’t captured by our giving spirit, by Santa or our trees. This God came to BE the gift for us such that no other gift would ever be necessary. And the real miracle is that He could be held by the world at all, let alone the lowly town of Bethlehem, a humble manger or the body of a newborn baby. The miracle is that He would come at all.
My prayer this Christmas is that we would all be captured by the mysticism and magic of the birth of Jesus—that we would stand in awe before it like a child, as if for the first time. For until we have been awed by the impossibility of it, we will never begin to truly grapple with its historical veracity, its beautiful promise or its claim on our lives.
May the baby Jesus reveal Himself to us as the God of Creation this Christmas. He is God with us, come for us, because we need Him more than we even know.