As a kid, I loved Christmas like a glutton loves a buffet. Christmas meant toys. It also meant seeing my cousins, visiting my aunts’ houses and a nice chunk of time off from school.
I knew we were celebrating the birth of Christ — Mom and Dad had us sing Happy Birthday to Jesus every Christmas morning — but his birthday was a distant second to all the immediate benefits directed right at me.
I’m sure that’s the way it is for many children today.
Yet, I can hardly fathom that my mind ever really lived there.
I guess we all live life from the perspective of camera one; we’re each the central character of our own day-by-day saga. In fact, we’re seeing the world out of our own eyes and the whole of the tale spills out from our perspective; we’re the star of the show and the director. No wonder narcissism and egos can become such a problem.
From a different perspective — the history of everything — we’re not much in and of ourselves but a very temporary flea riding the back of this spinning rock as it circles the sun.
But, at least from a Christian worldview (one I subscribe to and believe in wholeheartedly), we matter much more than that.
Because we matter to Jesus the Christ, the long-promised savior and blessing who fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham that of his lineage would come forth a “blessing for all nations.”
The angel who appeared to the shepherds in their pasture to announce the birth of Jesus said he was bringing, as Linus reminded us, “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.”
That planet we’re riding? Doesn’t exist without the pre-advent, living-in-heaven for time immemorial version of Jesus who was involved in the conversation that brought our ancestors into existence. “Let us make man in our image,” said God as he stated his intention.
In fact, everything ever created, from scripture’s telling of it, only exists because of Jesus. “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made.”
More importantly for us, the next line: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
I didn’t come from an evangelical tradition, but I’ve learned to think different over the decades.
The best gift we can give to anyone this or any Christmas, is an introduction to Jesus in the hopes that their life will be showered in the fruit of those tidings of great joy announced with such oddly isolated fanfare in a dark field with sheep more than 2,000 years ago.
There’s madness all around us these days. But we’ve been gifted hope.
Share that hope with someone.
Merry Christmas everybody!
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