This Christmas was good, in all senses of the word. We put up a tall tree one week before Christmas (we ran out of time and had to buy it). I got all my shopping done 4 days before Christmas. We went caroling at a nursing home, and were blessed by those dear faces. We drank eggnog and hot cocoa. We lit candles for Advent, Dad read Christmas devotions. Mom read John Piper's The Innkeeper; and it really touched me again this year (I highly recommend it to you). We watched the most classic Christmas movie of all time, and a personal favorite, It's a Wonderful Life. We were blessed to have each of us here under one roof, together. But mostly, this Christmas, like every Christmas, and every day, was good because the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and God saw that it was good.
Since creation and hearts fell in the Garden of Eden so long ago, the world has spun upside-down. When the realization of the curse hit Adam and Eve, God spoke a Promise to the serpent, and to mankind. "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." (Genesis 3:15)
From that time forward, God's people looked for the Promise. Abraham a caught glimpse of it in the stars when God promised that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He saw it again with Issac as they stared at the ram caught in the thicket - God would provide. Moses looked for the Light and caught a glimpse of it in a bush that burned but was not consumed. He took off his sandals because he stood on holy ground. The Israelites wandered, looking for a place to call Home. With hangdog hearts, mankind stood condemned, "but the tide turns now at Bethlehem."*
The earth almost went to Hell. Instead, the greatest paradox of history, Heaven went to earth, and even further below. Christ, the God-man, was born in a dugout. "That is perhaps the mightiest of the mysteries of the cave. It is already apparent that though men are said to have looked for hell under the earth, in this case it is rather heaven that is under the earth."**
The stars parted, and God placed His foot on unholy ground. Finally, a war cry went out into the silent night, and the powers of darkness trembled. It was the cry of an infant. The shepherds came to see Him, the Good Shepherd, lying in a hay manger to become food for His sheep; to be the perfect Lamb, not caught in a thicket, but willingly offered for His people. The wise men sought true Wisdom and found it in a Child. Jesus had no place to lay His head, but He became a Home for us. Jesus had no sin, but He became sin for us, so we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
And that, my friends, is why Christmas is so good. To wrap up, I give you a Christmas poem more eloquent than my ramblings:
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
- By G.K. Chesterton
*Lyrics from This is War by Dustin Kensrue
**From G.K. Chesterton's book, "Everlasting Man", chapter titled "God in the Cave".
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