What is the true MEANING of Christmas? Look around, you say. It's lights, love, joy, giving and receiving, peace. I can't disagree but let me add some other things to that. The meaning of Christmas is brokenness, cancelled plans, hard nights, pain and sickness, unpaid bills, and Christmas greetings left unsaid. The meaning of Christmas is all of those things that should be but are not. The meaning of Christmas is grandeur and glory that, at least for now, lie buried under the ruins of war and famine and death.
Last week was a busy, busy week. Cookies to bake, gifts to wrap, holiday visits, and aaalllll the other minutia that comprises a typical week in the life. None of it happened. It all came screeching to a halt on Tuesday. No light-looking, no laundry. I.Was.Sick. I'd been under the weather for several days, rallied on Monday, crashed and burned on Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was seriously considering a visit to the ER: in addition to the sniffling, sneezing, and coughing, I'd spiked a fever and had little to no focus whatsoever. By the time my fever broke, and I sat down to spend some time with Jesus on Friday morning, I realized the only thing I'd said to Him the past three days or so was, Please heal me. And that, my friends, is the true meaning of Christmas.
The wonderful world, the world God called "good" after He created each meticulously designed element, the world in which sin was meant to be rejected in favor of relationship with a loving and perfect God, was indeed destroyed by sin. Disobedience brought about the trouble and terror we see all across the world. Disobedience, the breaking of relationship with our Creator, bore the fruit it will always bear, sadness, loneliness, despair, rage, darkness. There can be no other fruit on that vine, for it was meant to bear fruit after its own kind. But the true meaning of Christmas is that there is a Savior, a Savior of all creation, who came to earth to die, paying the penalty sin requires, and His resurrection guarantees that all will be made new. And while creation waits to be made new, the followers of Jesus are today raised to new life! Those who cry out Please heal me, are indeed healed in a lifelong process to which we surrender ourselves. We trust Jesus, we obey Him, we commune with Him, we ask forgiveness for those moments when we allow selfishness to reign in our lives, and in those sleepless nights and days of great affliction, in the face of war and famine and death, we say all that we can, Please heal me.
And we begin to understand the true meaning of Christmas.
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