It’s not been a pleasant absence from you all.  Actually, at this moment, I’m supposed to be sitting here writing a thank you note for all those who ministered to my family so well in the weeks of my mom’s sickness and days of her death last week.  Clearly that’s not what I’m up to tonight. 

I have Christmas music playing and the house lit wonderfully festive (thanks to some of those amazing souls who ministered to me by decorating my home) and yet there’s a numbness in my soul at the moment. 

Thankfully, God got a jump on things for me and had me teach a Christmas series very early in the holiday calendar.  In that study and time with Him, Christmas took on a whole new meaning it never had before.  Perhaps I will begin this Christmas journey there—for you and for me.  It is in the beauty of Christmas that God will lead and carry me. Perhaps I can write-or is it right- the healing here.

I’ve always seemed to grasp Easter.  It’s far less revered, shorter in duration, less ‘festive,’ and yet far easier to understand for its significance. Easter makes sense.  It’s on the cross that death and Hell were defeated.  It’s in His offering that my eternity was secured.  It’s in that Passion week that He put the pin in my redemption and release.  That I get.

But Christmas.  Christmas has usually eluded me.  It seems like it should be this big deal of such monumental significance to believers.  And, yet, year after year, the grandeur of it all escapes me.  I end the season wondering how it is I’ve missed it again. 

I’ve come to see that the reason I keep missing it is because I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for.  Like a child expecting the biggest or brightest gift under the tree, I go looking fervently for I know not what.  And, thus, the gift eludes me; unfound, unsavored, unopened.  Again. 

Christmas is not simply the necessary precursor to Easter, great for what it meant would be.  It is great for what it was.  And I truly believe churches the world over have failed to see or define it.  We talk about the baby and the cross and the joy and the shepherds and the virgin and the angels and somehow the sweetness of the Man Child is supposed to move us to the depths of our spirit.  But sweet scenes, like idyllic settings, fade from significance rather quickly after they are passed. 

Christmas must have a significance of its own—not for what it made possible later, but for what it brought in that night.  Why is Christmas not just a big deal to department stores and children, to midnight mass goers and candlelight service participants, but to me?  Now and later, year after year.  Not just because His birth was necessary that His death might follow. 

Was Christmas just a tender and touching story of someone faithful long ago?  Is it meaningful to me in some way that can move and shape me today, not for the biological necessity of birth preceding death but for life in me now?  Why does God have us bring this story to remembrance with such pomp and stance over and over and over? Is there a message here I’ve been missing all my life?

Yes.

Christmas is more than Easter’s forerunner.  It is more than the first step in the plan to rescue me.  It is enough even if Easter isn’t thrown in.  It is beautiful and life-giving and to dismiss what it is in favor of what it would bring is to miss the greatest gift under the tree this season. 

Let’s find out what the present looks like so none of us miss unwrapping its greatness this year.