Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Luke 2:11-12
Roger Sonnenberg tells a story about when his very young son got sick, right before his first birthday. Once in the hospital, Roger and his wife were told that the child needed to stay in the oxygen tent that covered the crib. The child cried and cried. The parents were distraught and didn’t know what to do to comfort him.
Then his mother came up with a plan: she would make herself as small as possible, so she could get into the little crib with him, inside the tent, in order to comfort him. Sonnenberg writes, “In an even more sublime way, God did the same thing for us at Christmas. God left heaven, came to earth, and climbed in with us… there was no other way to bring healing to the world.”
Many people enjoy Christmas for the ‘presents’ it brings – time with family, gifts to open, parties to enjoy. But there is another ‘present’. It’s the knowledge that the ‘love’ which lies in the manger must one day be given up for all people. That does not mean we cannot rejoice at the birth of the Christ child. It only means that in our joy we must never forget the debt we owe, which we humbly acknowledge, to Jesus, our Lord and Savior. He became one of us in order to bring comfort and salvation to people who walked in darkness. We feel the poignancy of Jesus’ gift in this hymn by Christina Rossetti:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain; heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; yet what I can, I give him: give my heart.
May your Advent and Christmas seasons be filled with the knowledge of God’s love in Christ, and may you be willing to give your heart to him this season … Pr. Rita