There are sweet and tender gifts at the heart of Christmas and then there are those that seem harsh at first blush.  These take on their beauty in perspective.

Before The Baby, there was a baby in this Christmas story.  John’s birth was a miracle and blessing.  Zechariah and Elizabeth had longed for this son and, surely, rejoiced and reveled in his coming.  But then there’s a little aside.

It is said they were ‘advanced in age’ when John was born.  It is also said that John grew up in the wilderness.  Logic might have us put these together and assume that he grew up in the wilderness because his aged parents weren’t around long enough for him to ‘grow up’ with them. 

They held their blessing for only a little while.

In the Christmas story there is this tension that we can’t avoid—the night ended, the morning came, the crazy guy sent his minions, real life wouldn’t relent.  Temporal life will not be denied it’s fleeting thievery. 

It seems the temporal way is like that—what we long for most seems to be gone too quickly, what we have plenty of we eventually reason we don’t want any more.  Human existence is simply not meant to last.

Now we see in a mirror dimly what we will then see face to face. 

I Corinthians 13:12

Hidden in the story of Christmas is a reminder that all the greatness we long for and hold dear here is just a dim reflection of the real thing that is being held for us.  The nearness we long for, the Baby that came, He grew up and died and rose and ascended.  The Holy Spirit was left for us, but as a deposit.  The flesh and blood and warmth and light,-the access-that is in holding for a future day. 

Zechariah and Elizabeth model for us delight in the blessings of today while holding dearest the Blessing of tomorrow.  They remind us that the trappings of this temporal life are not the gift but a foretaste of the ‘face to face’ life which will be ours always.  They give us a new perspective about the fleeting nature of the treasures we hold and lose.

In the beauty of this season we are told of the true beauty that is yet to be.  And in so knowing, we hold life loosely; loving the babies we hold and the treasures we so easily cling to.  Knowing they are but a dim reflection of their truest existence, a breath of the long sigh that will be our eternal reality in Christ.