It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Christmas comes but once a year.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.
Go, tell it on the mountain!
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come.

How many song lyrics, poems or stories remind you of this Season of Hope, sometimes when we're months in front of or behind it?  How often do words or phrases change our tune or outlook on the world around us?  How powerful, the words we use, the words we hear, the words we read!

Those of us celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, know full well that Christmas is closer than we're ready for, just yet, as we're headlong and up to our eyeballs in preparation for our family celebrations.  Those who celebrate simply, "Christmas" as a gift-giving observance, probably feel the same pull from family and social obligations, long lists of need-to-purchase gifts, baking, visiting, entertaining, and lack of rest.

When we look beyond the wrappings, peer past the decorations, focus away from the dazzle and the dollars, we have a very simple, poignant and melancholy... yes, melancholy ... remembrance of a baby boy's birth.  Those of us who have given birth, or have held a newborn and known the joy and awe in the tiny form know a tad about the feelings Mary had as she cradled the newborn King. 

God, our Heavenly Father, came to earth in the form of a helpless baby, born to poor, working class parents who had no hope of riches nor ever rise in rank in a class-oriented society.  He came to give us a human example of Godly perfection.  He came to show us that anyone could choose to do right and to believe whole-heartedly, as well as to give of his whole heart to everyone who needed even a glimmer of hope to go on in this weary world.

Jesus came to die. For a beautiful, glorious, grace-filled reason, but to die, nonetheless.  Anyone who has a child or holds loved ones dear cannot fathom, cannot even try to imagine bringing that child into the world for the ultimate purpose of offering him as a sacrifice -- for everyone else on earth and everyone yet to be born.  And the melancholy enters.  No one pictures death in the face of a newborn, seeing the promise and potential there for future milestones, and comparing characteristics of family members in the small one's features.  No one thinks of turning this child over to certain death ... having never done wrong himself.  Yet, he came to live a godly example and ... to ... die.

He came for you.  He came for me.  He came for the family down the road whom you have never met.  He came for taxi drivers, teachers, ditch diggers, doctors, world leaders, slaves, mothers, fathers, siblings, priests, mill workers, lawyers, tax collectors, businessmen, children and adults.  He came for one and all, not just a few.  He wants every one of us.

We need only give ourselves, and then watch and listen for the changes he makes within us, that help in making us new, help in making us more Christ-like.

We need only try with a mustard-seed-size faith -- if that's all we have to offer.  We need only look to Him for guidance, for grace and for mercy.  We will try and fail, we will persevere and suffer, we will work hard and glean little.  We will continue on in this path of faith ... and find Him at the end, just as he was at the Beginning.

He came for you.

God bless you, and Merry Christmas!