Christmas Time

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. -- Luke 2:11 (KJV)

Everything that can be said about the birth of Christ has been said many times.  I lack the ability to say even the old things well.  There are many who are skeptics and critics, as there have always been.  The mocker and the scornful change their names but never their attacks.  There is nothing new in being a cynic or in ridiculing the righteous.  Even the small-minded, the petty, the crude and the vulgar can feel insightful in making jests about the Virgin and about her Son.  They can do so bravely, and safely.  They won’t be threatened with beheading.  Christians will only pray for them because we know the One for whom they express disdain loves even, perhaps especially, those who would be His enemies.    

Jesus is the Lamb of God, typified by the Passover lamb.  He is, the Revelator says, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  The Lord laid aside His majestic glory and … made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  At that moment, He stepped out of eternity and into time.  Yet His birth, like His death, burial, and resurrection, is eternal.  Or, to quote Olaf Stapleton:  “For whatever is truly eternal is present equally in all time”. 

And that miraculous birth is truly eternal.  Like the unfailing compassion and mercy of God, it is new every morning.  To the world it looks like history, something past that has been used as a marker.  That familiar tableau that we recreate over and over in materials precious or common is an ever-present truth made manifest.  Be led to Bethlehem, stand in the damp chill of that grotto, and be rent by the cry of God as He takes on flesh.  The tenderness and innocence, the humanness of that moment is as real and as near as the blood, the ache and the agony thirty-three years later upon Golgotha.  It happened, as they say, once upon a time.  It is now.

The stable, the Virgin, the selfless protector, the shepherds, the angels, the beasts, the Baby, all are with us as we trim trees, hurry to homely houses, give, receive, and rejoice.  Yes, a sword will pierce our hearts, but that is for a different now, just as eternal.  It will wait.  Today we are with the shepherds keeping watch for we know not what, to be surprised by visions under an open heaven; we stand solemnly and resolutely beside the stalwart dreamer Joseph; we wander with those wise enough to be see wonders and follow far. 

Merry Christmas.