And So This Is Christmas

CHRISTMAS may seem to have waned in the present retail-therapy age, where Media bombardment enjoins the technological age and latest gadgetry. Busy schedules and frantic rushing come to an abrupt halt even for fifteen minutes around ‘the tree’, and, whether we enjoy our contemporary Christmases or not, they appear here to stay (thank God you’ve been given another one!).

Christmas is about family, the celebration of the Saviour’s birth, and the giving of gifts, in the spirit of Christmas – which is a giving spirit – the Father gave the Son.

There are lonely people, too, who have no family, no family around, or they are lonely because they have family around. If we have lost in love, recently, for instance, no amount of family is substitute for the loss of a partner. If only we could have them back.

Christmas is centrally about a heart for the lost – the spiritually vanquished. If we have been blessed, our eyes roam for the one who seems cursed. We comfort those we can comfort.

Christmas is also about connection and courage. Perhaps it’s the first time we have decided to be truly bold and vulnerable – to have reached out to a person who means so much; to communicate our love, what we really feel, etc. Maybe it’s about reaching out to reconcile, in the spirit of Christmas.

Whatever it is, Christmas elicits from us the courage to reach out – to love.

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Over 2000 years ago

God the Father

Sent to Earth

His Son, to be Savior,

Divinity into human birth.

Jesus became human

So we could know the Father

He humbled Himself

Because of His love

Nothing else would He rather.

Jesus saves today as much as ever. Coming to earth, obeying a Plan that eternally was, He grew from vulnerability as a babe and died in vulnerability. No other king but the King of Kings would have audacity to insist He remain in weakness, poverty, and every sense of worldly lack. Amazing love it is that Jesus identifies most with struggle, trial, hardship, weakness. Call to Him who saves.

When we call on Him who hears, who gives us life, we will be answered. We will be told we need to connect with those who already call Jesus, “Saviour.”

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Christmas is as enduring as life itself. And, in spite of all the evils of this world, Christmas stands as an eternal paragon of peace and hope as the Saviour, himself, stood two millennia ago. Peace with God and humankind, and hope for the present and future; may you find them this Christmas.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.