Christmas is wonderful. But it really is HARD, too. If your Christmas was anything like ours, it included loved ones with illness, cancer, chronic pain, job loss, broken relationships, and wayward children. There were 18 of us gathered at my parents’ house last night for Christmas Eve. So much fun, and festivity! But just an inch below the surface was masked lots of really hard stuff.
Christmas is hard. Life is hard. But that’s the point. Our best clothes, our best church services, our best behavior, our best food and gifts… our best just isn’t good enough. That’s the point. God put on flesh and condescended to come into this grotesque, mixed up world where famine, and war, and orphaned children, and pride, and meanness, and selfishness are a part of the everyday experience for us humans.
And at least once a year, we try our best to taste a little of something more - something better than our best. And for a moment or two, the twinkling lights and crackling fire make the room feel like life is … not so hard.
I hate that my brother has constant, chronic, intense pain. I hate that my mom and my mother-in-law both have cancer. I hate that there are little boys and girls all over the world that don’t have a mommy and daddy. Life is hard.
But that’s the point. We need hope. We need to be saved from ourselves. We need a perfect lamb.
Thanks, Emmanuel. We’re awfully glad you came.
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