Christmas Reality

December 17, 2017

The Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke paint a picture almost completely different from what we have come to expect of the holiday season. For those gifted with a genius for nostalgia, newfallen snow crunching underfoot, shining like diamonds in the soft glow of streetlamps are but a prologue to visions of Victorian carolers, children tucked into bed dreaming of sugarplums (whatever they are), and of trees loaded with ornaments and lights, packages or an electric train at the base. I have to admit, our home has been decorated to the nines since Thanksgiving, with Christmas music playing nonstop on the CD player. 

Perhaps it’s the longing for simpler times, simpler meaning “when we were children” and didn’t have all the responsibilities and worries of adulthood continually leaning over our shoulders. This longing for simpler times can lead to a misreading of the biblical Christmas story. 

As Matthew and Luke have it, the whole endeavor, from the first angelic announcement to Mary that she would have a baby, to the Holy Family having to hightail it out of Bethlehem and sneak across the border to Egypt, is a non-stop carnival of bad news and trouble. For Mary and Joseph, it was having to work through the suspicion and feelings of betrayal when she came back from her visit to Elizabeth three months pregnant, to having to travel at nine months pregnant, give birth in a stable, only to end up as refugees in a foreign land. Some good news! 

But that’s often how God’s Good News comes to us. It’s disguised as troubles and problems, difficulties and disasters. The Nativity Story is certainly not what Joseph and Mary had in mind when they were first engaged. And angelic visits notwithstanding, there were still plenty of challenges to be overcome in this mission they had been given of bringing into the world its Savior. 

We tend to believe that God’s blessings always feel good. We like it when they do, but oftentimes, his greatest gifts come to us in the form of interruptions, disappointments, and blasted expectations. And it’s not just occasionally that God’s blessings come to us in our sufferings, because we are often merely the instrument in his hand to provide that blessing for someone else. The wood carved into a clarinet or violin endures the knife and file not for its own sake, but for the sake of the music. So too, God shapes us in our trials, that we may be used to make beautiful music in the heavenly orchestra of his redemption for the world.