For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given
My cat, Pearl, who owns me and my husband, and bosses us about, is a dearly loved ball of fur. This year, because of a new porch door, a wreath that used to be on the old door ended up on the back porch door instead. The minute I opened that back door, Ms. Pearl spotted that “strange” object. She’d never seen that wreath before, and I watched her straining upward, her paws pressed on the door, trying to reach it, thinking about jumping, wanting to know what it was.
Like any dotty pet owner, I took her my arms and lifted her up to sniff this “odd thing”. I had to lift her even higher when I saw she couldn’t quite reach the top of the wreath. She carefully checked it out, while cradled in my arms, where she knows she is safe and loved.
The last photo ever taken of my mother, in her 103rd year, she’s bottle feeding the infant son of a young friend who had stopped by to see her. There he is, that tiny baby, on her lap, cradled in her arms.
On that Christmas morn, so long ago, we can picture the very young mother, Mary, cradling her baby son in her arms, filled with the awe and love any new, young parent feels.
Christmas is a season filled with love. And as we consider the love of Mary, and the love we feel and see around us, we sometimes forget, that our lives are also filled with love, because God holds us in His arms. God created us, He maintains us, and at Christmas He sends His Son, the Light the World, that we might be guided by Him, given courage in times of difficulties, and joy in times of celebration, and that we might know that always, always, we are loved.
This night, as we celebrate Christmas, we rejoice, for the Light has come, the Light that shines into hearts that are open and ready to receive it. And that light gives great hope and renewed energy and renewed courage as it drives back the darkness before it.
These days, many people feel we are facing difficult times. We are used to being in control of things, but we’re in a situation now where it sometimes seems nobody is in control of anything about the immediate, or the far future. We forget that it was at a time like this that the Truth of Christmas came to a people very poor, oppressed, looking for something to chase back the darkness in their lives. And God came to them and brought them new life and new courage.
We don’t know exactly why He did it. We are not privy to the mind of God. But we accept that He came then as He comes now, out of love. Love does such things.
God came to enter into our humanity as a human being, He came to experience the things that every little child experiences: the weakness, the inability to do anything for oneself - reaching out to those around Him to take care of Him, to comfort Him, to hold Him in their arms.
He would experience the helplessness a child would, He would experience the difficulties of a teenager, and He would experience, of course, the greatest difficulty of all, which is bringing the Good News of God’s healing and salvation to a world that perhaps would not accept Him.
And He would end on a cross, so that we might know…
When God comes to show us how much He loves us, He Himself sends His Son, and His Son endures the pain, He endures the desperation, He endures the edges of despair, He endures all that we fear in every one of our lives.
And He turns with love, and he turns with grace, and he turns to His Father at the moment He gives up His soul and He says, “Father, they are Your children, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
And that, of course, is the meaning of the Incarnation. For God Himself has come to offer His love and His life, to share our pain, almost to ease the pain that many of us continue to experience in our lives.
Because this is what love does.
And out of this comes the great joy of knowing that we are never alone, that God is with us through our joys and our sorrows, and that we walk with Him into all eternity.
Christmas is a wonderful time, but it’s just a day. It’s a day when we experience God’s love coming in a special way. And we turn to each other, and we feel a certain kind of warmth for each other, and a willingness to forgive each other, perhaps be more patient with each other.
It’s one of “those kind of days” where nothing has to be preached and we don’t have to be told this and that. We feel deep in our own hearts that we are in the Presence of a love that we can barely understand, a love beyond all telling, in the Presence of God’s great love for each and every one of us.
And then what happens when Christmas passes? What happens when all the presents are put aside? The challenge that Christmas gives us is to bring the feelings of this day further, as Jesus meant for us to do.
Did you notice that when Jesus came, He didn’t say, “Now you see, I have done this and you must do it.”
What He told us was, “Love one another as I have loved you. Love, not me, but love one another as I have loved you. And if you do that you will change the world.”
And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord”.
Merry Christmas!