My husband has a very firm “no Christmas music before Thanksgiving” rule.  

I love, love, love Christmas music.  I see the need for the rule.

And so today is day one.  Christmas music echoes through the house and I’ve already found myself crying on my knees as the words pierce my heart with aching accuracy, ripping through all that I so successfully suppress at other times.  

The song is Just a Girl by Brandon Heath.  It’s quite beautiful.

I taught this morning on Gideon from Judges chapters six and seven.  Throughout this week I had to deal with myself and some realities I came to see as I looked at his life and his incredible faith.  There are parts of me that are content where I am with the Lord at times, where I’m ok with halting the progress of my faith.   There appear to be places of depth with the Lord I’m not even drawn to go actually.  I didn’t like this reality.  I like thinking that I’d both live and die for Him.  I like thinking that I will never settle for less than all that He has for me and desires of me.  I like thinking I never falter in my striving to be more every day than what I’ve seen myself to be today.

But liking it doesn’t make it so.  

I discovered parts of me that don’t mind being extreme or fanatical, but there are limits within other parts.  There are some extremes that just don’t appeal to me now.  There are even some places I’m not drawn to go even with the Lord at my side.  

There is much of myself I don’t want to see and may have never looked upon before.  John Ortberg calls us all rag-dolls.  Too often we see ourselves more like china dolls. I have this week dealt with these truths and only now am I in a position to change them.  

Now back to Just a Girl.  

It’s about the innkeeper.  I’m the innkeeper.  

God Himself has knocked on my door and I was too busy, too full, too used to looking at life through the lens of business and to-do’s and self-sufficiency to notice that the God of All Creation has stepped into my world.  

First I listened to Pentatonix Hallelujah.  I stood and raised my hands and cried out my own broken hallelujah to the King who loves me in all my fallenness.  Such is the duality of life.  Some days I’m among the angels singing hosanna’s in the open fields and some days I’m the innkeeper lamenting the foolish turning away of my Savior and friend.  

Lord may I not be too busy for you in this season.  May I not pass up an encounter with my Loving God in favor of …anything–busy-ness, tradition, self-seeking, pride, rest, desire, comfort, ignorance, short-sightedness, pick your poison.  May it not be said of me that when the season passes I must say, “What have I done, He’s just a babe.  I could have…”

Instead may we all be shepherds: leaving sheep, discarding social etiquette, chancing being rude and turned away, not caring that the timing is wrong or that the whole story doesn’t even make sense.  

Toss tradition, leave behind social acceptance, resist the pull of societies demands, stand expectantly upon your doorstep awaiting the arrival of the Child King for a visit.

Do Christmas differently.